One turning point in my life was when I graduated high school a semester early. It started at the beginning of senior year. I had heard of people graduating early in the past, but I didn’t know anybody that had followed through with it because of the extra classes we had to take without any off hours.

Moving out was a big reason I had wanted to graduate early from high school. I definitely felt that I couldn’t live at home with my little brother and sister anymore. I love my family, but I would rather see them every few months instead of living at home for another year.

 A lot of my friends from my ward had graduated the year before me, and were already attending BYU-Idaho. I had been hanging out with one of my friends that was a super-senior (a senior that had failed too many classes, and had to take a fifth year of high school). He was also a big motivation for me to graduate early.

I wanted to get a head-start on college before I went on my mission, so I decided I should see what it would take for early graduation. I went in one afternoon to talk to my school counselor. As I waited nearly an hour outside of his office while he talked on his phone, I started to have second thoughts. I didn’t have enough credits right now, so I would have to take a full schedule, plus a few online classes, and all without any off hours to have enough credits by the time the semester ended.

When I first got into his office the first thing I noticed was that it was way too hot. My overweight counselor was sitting at his desk on his computer sweating through his shirt. I wanted to get out of there but I couldn’t. I talked to him for a while and got a load of paperwork to fill out. I then found out that I needed twenty community service hours in order to graduate, and they were due later that same day. Since I hadn’t kept track of any of the service hours I had done, I had to skip my next classes, track down the young men’s president that had helped me with my eagle scout project, and get him to sign the paper that said I completed all of my service hours.  Over the next couple days I finished the paperwork, and met with my principal. I was all set to graduate.