As I stepped onto the bus after the last day of school, several thoughts and emotions swirled within. I started my high school career kicking and screaming, disconnected from the promise a good education threatened to unleash. Four years later, I didn’t want for it to end.

After moving to four school districts in three different states, all before the sixth grade, each of the placement and IQ tests drew the same conclusion. I was academically lazy. I floated along but never lived up to my true potential. High school exacerbated the issue.

After graduating from an eighth grade class with eighty two students to a freshman class of over seven hundred, I felt like a lost piece of plankton set adrift in an ocean of academia. It didn’t help that I was painfully shy. Treading water had always worked in the past, at least enough to earn passing grades, so I continued with the same lackluster effort. By the end of the school year, I was a few percentage points from having to repeat freshman year.

Sophomore year felt like a clean slate and it was to a certain extent. The bigger issue was that the foundation of knowledge learned the previous year was shaky at best. It made the second round of math and language arts a lot more difficult. I scraped by with tutors and help from some of the teachers. For a few of my classes, whether or not I passed came down to how well I did on the final. Two weeks after school ended, long before report cards were issued, my Spanish II teacher called to give me the good news. She knew how hard I had worked and didn’t want me waiting in limbo.

Each successive year, I did a little better and earned a little more confidence. After almost failing freshman year, I earned solid C’s as a sophomore. Junior year saw B’s or better with straight A’s throughout senior year. It took four years but I finally achieved the Dean’s List.

During that final bus ride home, I thought about everything that had taken place over the last several years. There was one lesson learned that was far more important than any grade ever achieved.

Regardless whether it was a passing grade or any challenge encountered in life, all I had to do was focus my mind on succeeding. My successes or failures would not be defined by anyone other than myself. As long as I put my mind to it then failure wasn’t an option. I would succeed.

I didn’t know it at the time but my entire life became based upon that mantra. Any time a goal needed to be set, I’d place it somewhere beyond the grasp of my abilities. It forced me to push myself in ways never dreamed possible. To this day, I’ve hit every goal ever established since the tenth grade.

It is why I still wear my high school ring. Even though I graduated college with high honors, my high school ring serves as a constant reminder of that invaluable lesson.

Despite all of the self inflicted academic turmoil, my high school memories are cherished. It was the only time in my life that I wasn’t forced to relocate in the middle of the year. During that chunk of time, I matured the most and learned how best to interact with the world around me.

With a smile in my heart, I stepped off the school bus. When college started in the Fall, I only had a thirty minute commute. I planned on living in that school district forever and didn’t mind the drive at all. Unfortunately, my parents had other plans. Erected at the foot of the driveway, a sign was posted advertising our house for sale.

I cried myself to sleep that night and many nights afterwards. When the house sold a few months later, I stole the sign from the front yard. It served as one last memory from a neighborhood filled with them.

It’s been over thirty years since that time and I still haven’t forgiven my parents for selling the house. I also haven’t been able to bring myself to drive by it. Somewhere in the attic of my house, though, is the stolen “sold” sign. Unlike my childhood home, the memories and collectibles from my youth will never be put up for sale.