FCYU-Feature Story

Graduation Day
To get that diploma, I had to lose the attitude

By Griffin K.

Recently I achieved a goal that many thought was impossible. I graduated high school. To do that, I had to go from nothing to something.

I began as a real class clown, a wiseass with the mouth of a sailor who was highly disrespectful to all. I forgot about reality, which was that I couldn’t be this way forever.

Believing in myself helped me make a 180. Once I believed in myself, I came to see I was capable of doing anything I put my mind to. But getting to that point was a long and painful process.

Couldn’t Tell Me Nothing

When I started high school, I had the attitude that you could not tell me nothing. My attitude got me in a lot of trouble and made people doubt me. I was in Greenburgh 11 High School at my group home at Children’s Village, and I hated it with a godly passion.

One day, my friend and I were sitting in class plotting a way to shut up my English teacher, Ms. Henry. I came up with a plan to interrupt her every time she spoke.

Ms. Henry walked up to the board, and as soon as she opened her mouth my friend told her to shut up. We took turns doing this for two periods. Ms. Henry kept assuming at the wrong time which person was speaking. Every time my friend said something she thought it was me, and vice versa.

This made me laugh so hard that I knocked into a file cabinet and all the books fell on my head. You should have seen the look on her face. She was tight, real tight, and I didn’t even care.

Doubts Creep In

Back then, I was always trying to be a class clown. I would do anything to make my peers laugh, to get the respect I desired. People were always patting me on the back and giving me mad props. I was feeling like a whole new boy.

But my behavior led some of the staff to assume that I would not pass high school. They joked about what they would buy me if I passed. They were just being sarcastic, and it wasn’t funny. It led me to believe that they thought I was stupid.

At this point, I really started to doubt whether I could make it. It wasn’t until I met that first person who really believed in me that I started to see things differently.

From Bad to Worse

When I got discharged from Children’s Village and enrolled at Manhattan High, I was hopeful that things would get better. They didn’t.

From day one, the kids at Manhattan High gave me a bad vibe. I could see from the flags they had hanging from their pockets that many of them were gang members, and gang members and I do not get along.

My plan had been to get my diploma and bounce, but the gangs got in the way. I wasn’t making any progress in school because I was too busy helping out friends who were in trouble with the gangs. And when those idiots antagonized me, they got what they were looking for: a fight.

One day, a kid named David (not his real name) who hung out with the gangs was at the door holding me up from getting to class. We exchanged words and he gave me an invitation to fight.

He came at me with a plastic bat, and I grabbed his head and started banging it into a pole. David ended up getting sent to the hospital in an ambulance, and I was arrested and kicked out of Manhattan High.

Getting a New Mind Set

After all the fighting, arguing and being kicked out of high school, I gave up on myself. No lie, at one point I felt like I would never graduate. I was beginning to believe the bad things people had said about me at Children’s Village, and I was losing my determination quickly.

My determination is a big part of me, so almost losing that was very scary.

I had to get off that negative, trying to be class clown act. I had to change my whole mindset, and it wasn’t going to be easy. I needed someone to believe in me.

A Push in the Right Direction

I started dating a girl I’ll call Black Rose. One day I was talking to Black Rose in the hallway of her apartment building. I was telling her how much I hated the group home, and how some of the things they did were not fair. OK, I was complaining.

Suddenly she grabbed me and looked me in the eyes and told me that everything would be all right.

I was reborn after that. It was like every time things got too rough, Black Rose would tell me that she believed in me. No one had ever given me that kind of support before.

Her belief in me felt good. On the real it was fantastic, and it helped me to get back on track.

Finding My Determination

Slowly but surely I began to change. In September, I started at Manhattan Night & Day School. I took my schoolwork more seriously now.

I also took a hard look at my past. I saw that people had only given me respect when I was acting like a fool. Come to think of it, it wasn’t really respect at all.

I realized that I had been confusing respect with attention, and that acting that way in Children’s Village had deprived me of an education.

Also, I decided that having friends in school was just too much stress. It made me feel good to have my friends come to me with their problems, but I had my own problems that had to be fixed.

So I tried the opposite, having no friends, and it worked. I didn’t get into any fights, and it was goodbye to all those years of me looking like a damn fool.

I was focused on graduating, and my determination became my strength again. Any assignment that the teacher gave me, I believed that I could do it and I did. I was the first one in and I finished all my work. Teachers looked at me and could not say a word, and that made me feel good.

The Last Laugh

Well, I finally did what some people said I could not do, I graduated. When they gave me that diploma I was stuck on stupid for a minute. The little boy inside me was jumping for joy. All I can remember is saying, “Finally, finally, finally, I did it. I made myself proud.”

To all the staff at Children’s Village who told me, “If you do graduate I’ll give you this, this and this…” Well, cough it all up.

Life After Graduation

It’s still amazing to me how a piece of paper makes you feel more important, more a part of this world. Getting that diploma means that people have to see me as a young man who is trying to move on with his life. People will respect me more because I now see what life is really about.

Now I’m trying to get my own place and I’m trying to get into Hunter College. I feel like I can do anything because I already did what seemed impossible. I know I will always face losing my determination. That is something that will never go away. But believing in myself helped me find the person who is able to do anything to succeed.