Hamse F
Before I came to Abaarso, I had never interacted with non-Somali speaking people. Attending a good school run by English speaking teacher must have been difficult for me. I never went outside of my conservative community before, and coming to a place with diverse cultures and customs was something I had never dreamed of. It was so difficult for me to adjust to an English immersion environment academically, because I was from a public school in Hargeisa where all classes were taught in Somali. It was extremely hard for me to understand the vague explanations that my teachers made in class. They would call on me to answer questions, and I had no clue what they were asking about. At school I was taciturn; my responses to the teachers were simple yes or no answers. This caused me to fall behind in class due to my incapability of understanding English.
When I came to Abaarso, I didn’t know the English alphabet by heart or words and this caused my grades to suffer. This provoked hardships to come in the future. I was overwhelmed and disappointed about my overall performance at the school. At first I thought that there was no hope for me at the school. I was about to give up, until one of my teachers gave me advice to become persistent and hard working to achieve greatness. Although I took my teacher’s advice to stay, I was still not putting tremendous effort on my studies. My habit of being gregarious inclined me to seek the company of the others rather than focusing on my education. However, one day I saw a couple of eleven graders celebrating because they got accepted to continue their education abroad. This incident incited me to work diligently in order to have opportunity to go somewhere else in the world to acquire knowledge.
In my sophomore year I worked so hard to put myself in a position to apply to American boarding schools the next year. From dawn till dusk, I was always studying my subjects. For the first time ever I felt proud of my progress that I made that year. One year later, I was finally a junior student which meant I could potentially apply to American schools. Suddenly, my dreams were crushed by Jonathan when he decided that I was going to stay rather than go abroad. He told me that I was a good student, but I could improve my grades. This firm decision had a huge impact on me as it handicapped my academic performance throughout that year. I stopped working hard and my appetite for education dropped. I was left hopeless which made me have an indifferent view of my future. All these bad thoughts troubled my mind and made me not perform well in my classes. I didn’t think that I was undermining my chances to get accepted to boarding school next year, but I realized my weaknesses when I got rejected from Church Farm School last year because I was not a competitive student with an excellent grades.
Staying three years at Abaarso has made me become more wise and patient than the person I was before. Reflecting over my past mistakes motivated me to become more devoted in my education. I immersed myself into the goodness of self-study and time management, and I developed a deep conviction of believing in myself. My senior year was the best so far in my high school journey. Unfortunately, I didn’t achieve all my dreams and fulfill my expectations. I closely evaluated my achievements at Abaarso School, and as result I recognized that I needed more time in high school. Going back to the eleventh grade was in my mind before Alex and James held a meeting for seniors, and told us that it was possible for some of us to go back to the eleventh grade to create opportunities for ourselves. It was so difficult for me to make a decision because I had to consult with a lot of people. I wanted to go back to the eleventh grade because I believed it would be a golden opportunity for me to improve my grades and recover from my high school lost. I wanted to be prepared for college after two more years because I knew that I needed more time to work on acquiring more knowledge.
Most nights I could not go sleep easily without thinking about how tough it was going to be if I went back to the eleventh grade. My classmates’ wonderful memories and my upcoming graduation bothered my mind not to easily decide my future. I conferred with some of my friends about my plans, and they had different judgments about my future. Unluckily, they didn’t help my situation, but few of my friends urged me to go back to the eleventh grade. After thinking about it a lot, I decided to go back and it was totally my personal decision. It was about 9pm when I went to meet with Noah about being a junior again next year. He was in the teachers’ office and called him. We went outside of the school building and stood near the soccer field. It was so painful for me to share with him my final decision, but later it was a relief. Noah was quite interested in my decision and he told me that I would do fine next year. When our conversation ended, I went back to the dorms and told my friends that I consulted with Noah about my ultimate decision. Some of my friends replied that I was being hasty and strongly suggested that I could wait at least to graduate with them and then I could later decide what I wanted to do with my life. As time passed, the graduation ceremony was coming and eagerly I wanted to see myself graduating.
Unfortunately, a few hours before my class commencement my teacher Will told me that I was not graduating with them. I thought I was graduating with my classmates and had bought new clothes from Hargeisa. I didn’t know what do because I have been waiting for this moment to come for four years and most importantly he hadn’t told me this ahead of time. I could not sleep because I was worried about how difficult it was going to be tomorrow for me to watch my classmates graduating. I woke up with reddish eyes and tiredness because I over-slept. Everyone at the school was happy and celebrated with the graduating class, but I was not celebrating with them because I didn’t have enough time to let these thoughts fade away in my mind. I was hearing speeches followed by applauses and flashes of the cameras, but I was absent minded. I was crying whenever I looked at my classmates. I brought glasses to hide my tears because I knew that I would cry during the ceremony. The last day of the school year was my saddest day so far in my life. I thought my pain was over, but actually it was not. I was not pleased to go home because I knew my parents would not be happy about my decision.
My parents were committed to helping me get an education because they had a deep conviction in learning. They were a great source of inspiration for me and encouraged me to value education above all else. I could not able to tell them my decision because their continuous encouragement should help me seize all the opportunities that came along the way, and I promised to make my parents proud, but I didn’t. My decision ended up making my parents disappointed. I spent all my summer vocation elucidating my decision to my parents, but they were not willing to accept it because my parents yearned to see me going to college, and they wanted me to be an excellent model to my younger siblings.
I came back to Abaarso to help the teachers with the orientation week for the new seventh grade students. The year was about to start within a week, and hopelessly I didn’t know if I was going to stay at the school. I was scared to talk to James and Alex about my situation which was that my parents and I disagreed about my future, and they told me that they would figure something for me. My hope of continuing my education here came alive again.