Ch-Ch-Changes

It is difficult for me to think back and identify an event that instantaneously changed my life in a monumental way.  Most of the big changes in my life, other than the obvious ones which occur in most people’s lives, such as going off to college, have occurred gradually.  It is rare that something happens which is so dramatic that I can discern immediately that it will have lasting significance.  I’m sure that my life has not been as difficult or interesting as some, but usually I do not realize the importance of an event or the influence of a person until some time later, after their consequences have played out to some degree.  One event that I can now see had a huge influence on my life was the decision of my parents, when I was eight years old, to have me skip the third grade in elementary school.  I had been in a combination 2nd/3rd grade class during 2nd grade, and at the end of the year my teacher recommended that several of her 2nd graders, including me, skip right to 4th grade.  This may not seem to be a monumental change in terms of the learning material that I missed; I never learned how to make upper-case cursive letters, memorize the capitals of every state, or a few other things that kids are normally taught in third grade, but the absences of these skills did not severely influence my development.  However, I realized recently that the other implications of being moved up a grade have probably influenced my life in such a monumental way that it seems reasonable to divide my life into pre- and post- periods.  If this change had not occurred, I would have had all different sets of friends throughout middle and highschool, which could potentially have dramatically affected my values, habits, and overall social development, based on how important peer groups are in any adolescent’s growth.  I could have ended up going to a different university, since my teachers, class rank, and extracurricular experiences would have been different throughout highschool.  And I probably would not have started dating my boyfriend of three years, because being in different grades we would not have had pre-calculus together as sophomores, and that would have monumentally affected the last three years of my life. I would be a very different person without him as my best friend.  Based on these reasons, and some others which you the reader could probably figure out, I think my parents’ decision to move me up a grade when I was in elementary school ended up dramatically affecting the rest of my life so far, and could be seen to divide it into a before and after of sorts.

-Catie