Allison+M

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When I was born, no one saw that loud, challenging, chubby baby as a girl who would go on to do great things as she matured into a young lady. As I have grown, I have had to find my way around plenty of obstacles that stand in between me and my future. High school especially, has been a high speed roller coaster of multiple ups, downs, quick turns, and nauseating corkscrews. However, from various injuries to life-changing, future-altering moments, high school has become the four best years of my life to date. To be frank, freshman year was awful. My family decided to start fostering puppies to see if we were ready to take care of a dog ourselves again, but that just added to the hardship because we grew so attached to each dog we fostered. Besides that, my awful freshman year had nothing to do with friends, family, or school, but the fact that I lived, through most of my freshman year, with excruciating pain and internal torture. Unbeknownst to me, a simple game in eighth grade gym class the previous November had started a chain of events that would lead to reconstructive shoulder surgery the February of my freshman year. Through a span of eleven months, I had either dislocated or sublocated my shoulder five times, resulting in a one hundred and eighty degree tear of the muscle that keeps the ball and socket joint of the shoulder together. Before my surgery, I saw music as something fun to do in my spare time and as a stress reliever while I saw sports to be my passion and my future career. As I experienced the intense rehabilitation for my shoulder, I was unable to play sports, play piano, or even jog to stay in shape. I was left with just my voice, which turned into spontaneous singing and then evolved into a passion I would never let go. As freshman year came to a close, I started playing sports again; however, it was never the same. Sports were no longer a priority but an extracurricular that was meant to be purely fun, while singing and music became the center of my everyday life. During the summer before sophomore year, I joined a musical touring troupe that allowed me to find my love for performing while performing at Cary’s Lazy Daze and in a music festival at Koka Booth Amphitheatre. I met some really great people from high schools around the area whom I learned from and grew with over the course of the summer. Two girls I met on the troupe, Melissa Compton and Jordan Ferris, became two of my really good friends as we encountered and survived Ms. Cook together. Besides moving up to Concert Chorus and finding a best friend in Megan Glover, sophomore year gave me one of the best experiences of my life: a part in Green Hope’s production of //Fame! the Musical//. Sharing the stage with performers like Katie Finan, Lucas Varsano, my cousin Kailyn Eskridge, and Michael Davis humbled me greatly and gave me such insight into the true passion I felt for the stage. They blessed me with wisdom, experiences, and friendships I will never forget and felt special to receive. Moreover, our production of //Fame// won multiple awards at the local Capital Awards including Best Musical! When the Concert Chorus, or the Voices of Hope at this point, took their spring trip to New York City for a national competition, I was blessed with even more experiences I would never have had the opportunity of experiencing. For example, while in New York, I had the privilege of attending the opera //Madame Butterfly//, the privilege of singing in St. Patrick’s Cathedral for hundreds of tourists, the opportunity to have a picnic brunch in Central Park, to window shop while strolling down Fifth Avenue, to have dinner in Chinatown, and take a dinner/dance cruise around the island of Manhattan with thirty of my closest friends. Plus, because Mama Compton is the best chaperone ever, the four girls in my group were able to go on a party limo tour around New York City at one in the morning with a French family that was visiting America for the first time ever. I would like to take this moment to give a shout out to some of the most amazing people I have ever met: the Jews in my life. My four years in high school would not be complete without mentioning the awesome experiences I’ve had the opportunity of being a part of thanks to a Jewish youth movement called NFTY or the North American Federation of Temple Youth. Five times a year, I have the pleasure of hanging out with Jewish teens from all over North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Washington DC to enhance our faith, spirituality, and religious ties in society. Being Jewish is a huge part of my life that I would never wish to change. I’m proud to be Jewish and I hope that by being a leader in my Jewish community, I have instilled that same pride in other Jewish teens. No matter what one’s religion is, they should be proud to bare those stripes to themselves and those around them. Coming back from my religious tangent, saying goodbye to my closest friends, who happened to be seniors, at the close of sophomore year was one of the hardest things I had ever had to do. But as I said goodbye, my family finally caved and rescued a golden retriever, yellow lab mix named Niko who had been malnourished and abused by his previous owner. Other than this precious puppy, I also said hello to some amazing people like Josh Knutson, Annie Carew, Matthias Kramer, Dri Damenesco, and Savannah Thorne. The aforementioned individuals became great friends of mine and helped me greatly in surviving a deeply dreaded junior year. With AP classes, SATs, ACTs, and work, stress became prominent and a social life became a rare oddity. In addition, I became more involved in the drama department at Green Hope along with the technical department. This included being the technical producer of //Macbeth//, costume designer and assistant stage manager for //Shakespeare’s Clowns//, and as a cherry on top of the already delicious sundae, I was blessed with a major role in Green Hope’s production of //Once on this Island//. Because it was my first main part in any production, I was laced more with fear than enthusiasm. Thanks to great friends like Nicki Hodgins, Kailyn Eskridge, and Ashley Kopp, I embraced my fear as another obstacle to overcome and turned all of my negative thoughts into hard work and motivation to succeed. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. Being Mama Euralie is still indescribable in words and an experience I will never second guess or regret. Being Drew Greene’s wife on the other hand, was something that I’m glad will never happen again. This amazing experience was further enhanced when Ms. Cook awarded me with the award for “Best Actress in a Musical” at the Drammy’s. I was humbled and ecstatic that I was being recognized for the hours of hard work I had put into making my part in the musical the best I could perform it. Outside of school, I joined a travel softball team and met some of the best girls I have ever met and played with. We encountered our own drama and ups and downs but overall, we won multiple tournaments and ended with second place in multiple others. Friendships were made and enhanced as we grew and evolved as a team and later, a family. Similarly, my recreational basketball and softball teams went undefeated during their respected seasons and resulted in two championship victories as well. For a year that I feared at the beginning, junior year turned out to be a jam-packed year of excitement, nerves, and multiple triumphs. The summer before senior year, I became increasingly more and more lazy when it came to school work and college applications; however, I got them all done just in the nick of time for senior year to start and give me more things to procrastinate from doing. My amazing procrastination skills may have sacrificed my grades a little bit, but they helped to enhance my social life and gave me the time to do the things I really wanted to do and enjoyed doing. For instance, I was stage manager of Green Hope’s production of //Les Miserables// and played one heck of a troll, with my fellow trolls Jordan Ferris and Kendall Bagley, in Green Hope’s production of //The Hobbit//. Furthermore, these two productions introduced me to some of my best friends, despite the fact they’re sophomores. Elizabeth Earle and Sarah Bonin have easily made senior year two hundred percent better than my other three years of high school combined, and it’s only halfway over! My really good friend, and “wifey,” Victoria Saraldi also deserves a shout out for keeping me sane and collected through these drama filled and extremely stressful last few months. As I look toward the future, I’m sad to leave Cary because it means leaving my closest friends and the people I love hanging out with behind. However, as I look forward to pursuing my Criminal Justice degree in college, I have realized that a little distance won’t hurt a well-developed friendship. No matter if I attend Appalachian State University in the mountains, James Madison University in the Shenandoah Valley of Harrisonburg, Virginia, or travel all the way up to northern Ohio to attend Bowling Green State University for college, all of these wonderful friends aforementioned in this presentation will be just a phone call, text message, facebook message, or video chat away. Each friend I have made during my four years of high school will forever hold a special place in my heart because of the experiences and moments we have shared together. I love every one of you, but as I continue to count down the days to graduation I must prepare myself to say goodbye. Mary Lamberton Becker stated, “We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.” I now know this to be true because thanks to the friendships, opportunities, and moments I have experienced and hold dear to my heart these last four years, I can attribute all of the people I have met and all of the things I have done as a part of who I am. I am no longer a name on a sheet paper, but a human being who is making a new name for the actions she does and the people she helps. L’chaim and mazel tov to the class of 2012!