I went to high school at Parkside High School. Freshman year was a blast, and I was doing very well in all my classes. I kept the same four best friends since the seventh grade throughout high school, all of whom I am very close with today. Freshman year quickly became my favorite year of high school when just halfway through sophomore
year we were sent home with what we were told to be two weeks while COVID-19 made its way around the United States and our small town. Little did we know, those two weeks became the rest of our school year. Those weeks passed in a blur, I spent a lot of time running on
the treadmill, walking my dogs, and watching TV. Junior year was extremely strange because I was adjusting to virtual classes. The only things I really remember about junior year were doing fitness tests for gym class over a computer screen and beginning to date my current boyfriend. This was also the year that I began taking dual enrollment classes at
my community college which paved the way for my being able to graduate college a whole year early! Senior year was great but also incredibly stressful. Because our homecoming was to be outside, I decided to throw a homecoming for the upper classman at my school. In the summer months I worked at condominium in Ocean City, MD, called The Golden Sands where I would work banquets on the twenty-second floor and run an ice cream shop on the deck. My grandmother oversaw the food and dining there and acted as event coordinator, so I was able to use the banquet space if everyone paid for their ticket, covering the food and space. The event was a major success and by far the highlight of my high school career. We hired a DJ, and everyone danced all night long. I will forever cherish that night, no matter the stress that came with putting the whole thing together. After the big homecoming event came
the stress of applying to colleges. I was still deciding on my major, but I knew that I wanted to leave home for college. My dad, however, was completely unsupportive of this idea. He wanted me to attend Salisbury University and stay at home throughout college. I wanted to stay in Maryland for school, but venture into another area, I reckoned that I would never get an experience like going away from home for college for the rest of my life, and if I went away and hated it, I could always transfer back home to finish school. I ended up deciding that I would not be applying to Salisbury University, even though it was against my dad’s wishes because everyone else in my life was in full support of attending college away from home. In the coming months, I decided that I would be majoring in Speech-Language Pathology and attending Towson University. After touring the school and hearing more about the Speech-Language Pathology program here at Towson, my dad was reluctantly sold that this was what I was supposed to do, even if he did not particularly want me so far from home. I was still going strong with my boyfriend from junior year and we both decided to commit to a medium-distance relationship as he decided on attending Villanova University for Chemical Engineering with a minor in Aerospace Engineering. Throughout senior year I was also working as a hostess, then after turning eighteen, a server at a local restaurant called “The Irish Penny Pub and Grill” while also taking classes at my local community college and high school. Senior year was an incredibly hectic year with a lot of life altering decisions, but I made it through, and consider it to be one of my favorite years, looking back on it now.
https://wpstudents.towson.edu/hpusey1/
