I don’t think any student is truly prepared to be a senior. I know I’m certainly not. I’ve seen my older sister and my friends all graduate from high school, but senior year has always seemed like one of those things that you tell yourself, year after year, “I’ll get to it eventually.” Then, all of a sudden, you really are a senior, and you’re left wondering what happened to all of that time you had. Honestly, thinking about it, it kind of gets to me. I feel excited and impatient to continue onwards on the journey of my life, but at the same time I’m nervous and unprepared for the end of this chapter in my story. I have been shaped and molded into the person that I am today, and I have learned a great deal of knowledge about the world around me. I have completed all that there is to do, and now the only thing left is to step out of the past and into the future.

 

ACLC, in spite of all of its flaws, has been good to me. I’ve formed new friendships, rekindled old ones, and have been through both laughs and tears in my six years as a learner. ACLC has played a major part in shaping the kind of person I am and has helped me establish my personal qualities, work habits, and attitudes. My time at ACLC was the beginning of my exposure to the world outside of my little bubble, helping me learn that I’m unique, but no different than anybody else on this tiny blue rock. ACLC’s focus on community and on the individual learner has influenced my development into a person who believes that people create their own fate through their actions. While I face the strange, unfamiliar world with a mask of icy cynicism, my friendships and experiences at ACLC have helped keep that spark of idealism in my core alive and burning bright. I’ve come out of the shy, anti-social cocoon that I was wrapped in when I first came here, thanks to my friends, and they have helped me grow some self-esteem. I’ve learned some responsibility and self-management, thanks to ACLC’s emphasis on independent learning, and I have realized that I am the sole architect of my fate, and that my decisions shape the kind of person that I am.

 

Of course, school isn’t there just to help you grow as a person, it’s there to help you grow as a student or learner. ACLC has definitely contributed to that end. I’ve had a wide array of classes teaching new basics, with many different and unique facilitators. I have shared many a laugh with my classmates in Carlton’s algebra, geometry, and calculus classes. I took my first steps into literature with Julian and Lynn’s humanities and English classes, and then had thoughtful Socratic discussions with my peers about the deeper meaning of literature in Molly’s classes. I’ve explored the language of Español and the many cultures that share it in Terry’s Spanish class, dived head-first into the study of the sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology with Randy, Milt, and Patricia, respectively, and studied the history of the world we inhabit in Jake’s class. All of this knowledge, along with the guidance of the facilitators at ACLC, have helped me become a better learner, and someone who isn’t treading blindly into adulthood.

 

The thing about knowledge is, if you don’t know how to interpret it and learn from it, you’re not going to go very far. ACLC has helped me learn how to learn, and develop good thinking and reasoning skills. ACLC’s style of independent learning, with free periods and the Center, as well as access to technology, allows learners to develop ways to learn and complete their work in different ways. For me, free periods helped me with decision-making and systems-thinking skills. They allowed me to relax after class, but also let me finish my homework early, and work on other assignments and projects that I have had. I have also trained my problem-solving skills at ACLC, usually by dealing with the fairly common problems that come up with the somewhat unreliable computers, and the infamously prone-to-failure printers.

 

Speaking of technology, learners are practically required to know how to use technology well in order to find success. ACLC is a school that centers on technology, learners using tech in many different ways and aspects. I myself am no exception, but fortunately for me, I already possessed some skill in tech use before enrolling at ACLC, so I had a bit of an advantage. Still, I will say that ACLC has helped improve and exercise my tech skills. Throughout my time at ACLC, I have done an increasing amount of work on the computer, to the point where in my junior year, I did virtually all of my work on a computer, typing up assignments and printing them out or emailing them directly to my facilitators. Like I’ve mentioned before, the tech at ACLC has a tendency to fail at the wrong times, so I’ve grown adept at diagnosing problems and making small workarounds to maximize efficiency, such as having multiple copies of a document in different places (flash drive, school computer, web storage) so that I always have access when (not if) something goes wrong. I’ve even had a few of my less technology-literate friends ask me for help with using the computers.

 

Creating friendships and communicating with others is core to ACLC’s ideal of community, and the growth of interpersonal abilities. I have done many projects that require groups in my classes, such as making a foam board bridge in calculus and conducting a mock trial based on Of Mice and Men in English. From these projects, I’ve learned to work as a team member and to help others learn new skills if they need it, such as teaching my teammates how to make a PowerPoint for a humanities presentation on influential people from the Renaissance. I’ve built friendships with many different learners with diverse backgrounds, such as one with Colombian heritage, and another that immigrated to the United States from China just a few years ago. I’m proud to share bonds with each of my friends, and I think that we embody the spirit of community.