Cause-Effect

2/8/10 My Pathway We all take different paths in life and I chose a hard one. Growing up I always dreamed of going to school out of high school, getting married and having a family. My life did not go as planned. I got into the party crowd early in high school. Through parties I started to try different drugs and I liked them. My drug use started to get serious, I needed them. Dealing with drugs I ended up in jail several times. Finally after being sent to drug court I started to change my life, but it was a long road.

The start of my freshman year I met an older crowd. They were fun and had access to the party supplies. That appealed to me. At home it seemed like I was missing something. My parents partied and so will I. As time went on my drinking increased, it seemed to make everything disappear. The drinking after about six months seemed to not be enough. There was an answer for that, drugs. Of course it started with the classic marijuana. Wow it was awesome, so I started using marijuana on a daily basis. It made me feel so much calmer and less stressed, which meant I did not have to drink to mask my feelings. After hanging out with people that smoked I started getting around other drugs. More than willing to try anything that would make me feel better, harder drugs came into my life. I really liked them, the harder drugs let me party again. They completely consumed my life.

My drug use started to get out of hand. I was becoming an addict by the age of seventeen. I still had to smoke marijuana everyday and the harder drugs were at least four days a week. By the age of eighteen I had been selling marijuana for three years and heavily using hard drugs for over year. I ended up with a man who was fourteen years older than me.

My first arrest was six months after I met him. He was a drug addict like me and we sold together. I got set up by a co-worker and went to jail on two serious charges. My mom and grandma bailed me out and paid huge fees for a lawyer. The lawyer got me out of being in any serious trouble. I only served six month probation and came up dirty the one time he tested me. Still no punishment from the bad test, so I kept doing the same things using and selling. My boyfriend and I went on the run for awhile and he ended up going back in prison. I came back to Stillwater and did the same things I was use to doing. Once again at the age of twenty I was arrested the second time. Two more charges were added on to my paperwork, had to pay for another bondsman and lawyer, then I was sentenced to Payne County Drug Court.

"This is going be the worst thing ever,” is all I could think. I could not stop using drugs and did not want to, but Drug Court made me. It was a long hard process and they spent lots of time on me. Not just the time I spent actually in the program, I also served lots of jail time and time in rehab. The lady who was the head of Community Sentencing really liked me and gave me chance after chance to stop messing up. She would tell me, “One day you will get it, and come back to us.” She meant I will not always want to be an addict and she will not give up on me. I went through three rehabs and several jail visits in a year and a half. It finally clicked, I want to have a life and not this life. I started to participate in rehab and actually learned a lot about myself. I changed a lot and liked myself again. I went back to Stillwater with a new start, and went on to finish the drug court program. I found out I was pregnant and had the baby while still in the program. It was good for me, I graduated three months after my son was born. I am out of any kind of trouble and soon all that will be erased from my record. I live clean and have for almost three years now and I love it.

I did really enjoy my party days until it got out of hand. I cannot change my past and even if I could I would not. I love this great student, house keeper and mother I have became. I know life could have been easier if I had not become an addict but would I be the same person? I do not know. I can say my party days are out of my system, and it is great being a mom. If it was not for me going to jail several times and being sent through drug court I would not be this person I love today. I have a family and goals and am working towards them. Life is great no matter what pathway is taken, just stay strong while going though the rough patches. Everything turns out right in the end. If I work towards something right, whatever it may be, things only get better in the big picture of my life.

February 11, 2010 The Effects of Slacking Life holds many surprises that make life difficult and better. I did not think that college would have been one of the surprises the made my life harder, but it was. When it started, I thought that I was prepared and ready to do the work that was assigned to me, little did I know what I was in for. The college life was awesome, a little bit too much actually. I began to start slacking and before I knew it, we got our mid-term grades back and they were ugly. The fact that I decided to slack off my first semester of college has affected me in many ways and has the potential to change my life forever.

Since, I made the choice to slack off the school work was only harder once I finally started trying. I was too late though, this is college and it is a totally different type of learning than high school, there is no room to slack off and get behind. My first test scores were proof that slacking was not the thing I needed to be doing. I couldn’t help it though; I joined a fraternity and had a job. I cannot say that I would have been doing by homework if I wasn’t working or in a fraternity but it definitely did not help. There had to be something done with my time to focus more on school, so I had to quit my job that I got out of pure luck. By quitting my job meant I would not have as much money, but I looked at it as if I am not going out as much then I would not be spending as much money.

Do you know how hard it is to raise your GPA when you make one as low as I did my first semester? I made a 1.5 GPA, which means I will have to make really good grades from here on out if I plan on ending up with a decent GPA. This is going to be hard but it is something that I want and at least now I know what it is going to take. I heard that when looking for a job that they will look at what kind of grades I made. Having a bad GPA could effect me in the getting a job that actually want and not one that I have to settle for. Another effect that slacking off and making a bad GPA had on me was that I did not get to stay in the fraternity and therefore was forced to find a new place to live. I loved living in the fraternity house with a bunch of great people. There was always something to do, but maybe that was part of the problem I mean now I am living in the dorms and it is pretty easy to get my homework done.

This whole slacking off stage that I decided to go through my first semester of college did not just affect me. My dad is paying for my college which means I am pretty lucky because I will not be in debt for thousands of dollars when I graduate. All I am doing by slacking off is just costing my dad more money. The thing about college is if you do not decide in a certain amount of time then you can still drop it but you still end up paying for the class. This is exactly what happened to me so that is more money that my dad has to pay that he shouldn’t. I am also the baby of the family and my sister has already graduated and my brother is just about too, so I have no other choice than to quit messing around and start to get stuff done. It would a real shame if I were the only one that did not make it. My dad has worked hard his whole life so that my family can have everything we want and have the chance to get a good education and make something with our lives.

It took me a while to figure out what college was like, but I think I have grasped the concept. There is a lot of things that I could have done differently so that I would not be in the position that I am in right now. I do believe that it was a great learning experience and as long as I learn from this and do something about it then it should not be that big of a deal. Although this was my worst semester as far as school goes, I had a great time that I would not give back for the world, maybe a better GPA though.