Growing up sucks in a good way.

When I was in high school, I was like most and didn't care. I did just enough to pass. I didn't take AP or duel credit classes nor did I even think about it. I was an average C student and kept it that way all 4 years. Not to mention I was like that in junior high too. I won't say I wasn't pushed by my parents because they did care about my schooling. I just set my standard and they followed it. When it came to tests, I defiantly didn't study. If I had a project I did just the bare minimum. I was that student. When TAKS test came around I barely passed them, which is scary because your junior year if you don't pass, you don't graduate! Everyone knows you have to take your SAT or your ACT for college applications. I took them, and didn't do so well but didn't care to take them again to improve my scores. Little did I know it was all gonna come back and bite me in the ass. When I graduated, I wasn't very high in my class. I went to start filling out applications for college and my transcript with my scores from everything were rather frowned upon by colleges. When I simply decided to just come to Lee College I learned I had to take all remedial classes that took up my whole first year in college. I knew it was going to set me back. Classes began in the fall and I was still in that high school mind set. I didn't care and quickly learned neither did my professors. I messed up a lot my first semester. I was partying, not studying, gaining weight, just everything in the book. Then my second semester, that spring, I made a major change. I started working the same days. I set a workout schedule up and had hours each day for school work. I stopped partying so much and really changed my life around. Some say I grew up in a way and just realized I was an adult now and I couldn't just live in that life anymore. It took some getting used to but by the fall semester, I had improved my GPA. I had lost 50lbs and I had even gained a whole new group of friends that were in that stage of life I knew I needed to be in. Here I am finishing up my 6th semester, my GPA isn't the best but it is better then what it would of been if I had stayed in that other mind set. I'm graduating from here with a degree and the first of my family to do so. I'm down 80lbs and still working at it. I have a little case of "senioritis" all over again but I am trying! I do finally get to take a summer off and enjoy it before I continue with my school at a university. I just know to look back and see how far I've come and tell myself I changed for the better and grew up dramatically!

Is it worth it?

My research paper is about shift workers. I want to discuss the psychological effects it has on a person as well as the mental and physical result it has on someone. From just seeing my father work as a cop for sixteen years, he developed insomnia. He has such a hard time falling asleep, and when he finally does fall asleep it's not for long. When he switched to shift work in a plant he got to where he didn't even know what day of the week it was. He would get used to working nights then when he was off he would be on that time schedule so it just made him more exhausting for him. To me shift working shouldn't be an option. Whether you work strictly nights or strictly days, not both. The longer a person does this I've noticed in my research that they are more likely to have more health problems. There immune system always seems to get lower and lower the longer someone lets shift working effect there body. My girlfriend works seventeen hour days twice a week and those two days are hell. After being off for so many days and going straight to work days like that are really hard on her body. She tends to feel super sick at the beginning of the week and just wants to sleep then by the end of the week she is feeling better but it's time to work again. After reading a lot of different articles it has gone to show that women is more likely to developed a form of cancer due to shift working more than a man would. We were introduced to a women in the movie that did the shopping commercials at night for many years. She was diagnosed with cancer and going through her treatments for that, but no longer works the hours she does. It also read that the toll it has on a persons body is so harsh! It ages someone very quickly, and makes someone's moods crazy. There is so much information on this, that instead of continuing this research, I think people need to start looking for ways to limit these problems. Come up with alternative ways to get stuff done. I can say so much about the problems it's caused just not so much on ways of fixing things. I plan to talk about different experiments formed to see what shift working does to the body and try and find more ways to help them. Hopefully doing all this research I can give my dad and girlfriend some pointers on how to take care of there bodies so they don't develop anymore difficulties with themselves!