Feature Story First Draft

High school is a memorable time in our lives as we advance academically and participate in our various activities.  It is often remembered as a very busy and often hectic period in our lives, but coming to a close in my high school career, I look back at it and see that those past four years were years of growth and learning both of educational value and personal development.  There are many ups and downs as we each learn from our experiences, including our mistakes and achievements.  So, as high school comes to a close and I look ahead to what is next, I reflect on the many moments that have shaped me to be who I am today and who has helped me to get here. 

I have a large family.  Each holiday we all gather together and fill my grandparents’ house.  It gets quite crowded but we have never really known anything else.  All the adults sit around and talk, catching up with one another and telling stories.  The cousins play games and catch up on our lives as well.  When we were younger, we would all play together and make up fun games.  Today, we are all so similar yet so different than we were then.  Most of “the cousins” are now in college, or beyond, with the remaining few of us still in high school following close behind.  As I approach the end of my senior year in high school I feel as if I can relate more and more to my cousins that have already experienced what I am just starting to encounter now.  They are able to give me advice and tell me of their experiences in college and the process it took for them to get to where they are now as well. 

As I think about all of this and push through the stresses that are often present in making college decisions, I often stop and reflect on the relationships I have with my cousins and how no matter how far apart we are and how little we see each other sometimes, each time we come together it is like we see each other everyday.  The connections that we have are strong.  This is true for all of “the cousins”; however, among us all four of us have sort of formed our own sisterhood that has helped to keep us close and together throughout our high school and college years.  The four of us girls are close in age, a span of 5 years.  We were all raised like sisters as we did basically everything together from the time we were little.  It began with Alyssa and Lydia.  Alyssa is my older sister; she came first followed by my cousin Lydia.  They were inseparable.  A year after Lydia, I came along followed five months later by my cousin Becky.  We were also inseparable, often called “the babies”.  We were troublemakers, always getting into things and leaving a new mess almost everywhere we went for our moms to clean up.