<p>CrazyEddy47, here’s the same message, with a few updates:</p>
<p>If you have a jones for getting your academic/intellectual cojones knocked into another dimension, consider the University of Chicago, which wrote the rulebook for this kind of experience. Also consider Swarthmore, Pomona, and maybe Rice, depending on your political orientation. There are many schools which would allow/require that you work harder than you think is possible. In fact, developing your ability to achieve is what higher education is about, on any serious level. Look around, develop a list of possible schools. Most important, work hard now and do as well as you can. You don’t have a history of achievement at this point–you are still in your first semester of working hard in school, and you haven’t yet taken the ACT. </p>
<p>Does your high school have a decent academic advising office? Make every effort to talk with an academic counselor (even if your current assessment of this person might be negative) about your goals and to plan your courseload for next semester and next year. Doing this will also give you points for foresight and motivation, which the counselor will mention in a letter of recommendation that you will need him/her to write for you in conjunction with your applications to colleges. </p>
<p>I suggest that you give yourself a year of achievement in high school before you try community college. Learn how to ace high school first. Do this, and you will get into college, with or without community college experience. You mention that your life at home has not been conducive to academic achievement. My advice is to get assistance where you can. It sounds like you are trying to do everything yourself, to leap over obstacles, to make your own rules. You are at risk of getting in over your head, becoming entangled in unintended consequences due to lack of experience. </p>
<p>Consider that, if community college didn’t work out, for whatever reason, it would probably damage your ability to achieve in high school, and also would handicap you with an unfavorable college grade that would become part of your permanent academic record. (College grades are forever, unlike high school.) College admissions committees would see all this in your transcripts, and might not want to admit you.</p>
<p>Your independent studies are commendable, but you would be better off taking these courses at your high school. Are these course unavailable there? I don’t know your high school, but I am sure that it is the purpose of high school to provide interested students with opportunities to take courses that will prepare them for college. Again, I suggest that you connect with your academic advising office, and start from there.</p>
<p>Since you are just starting as a serious student, I also suggest that you learn how to study. You will discover, if you haven’t already, that you are not only learning, but learning how to learn. This is why independent study is usually unreasonably difficult. A course with a teacher and a syllabus (chronological course outline, including topics to be studied, important issues and questions about the issues, textbooks, and other information) should show you the fundamentals, teach you to apply and expand them, and give you an idea of how to do further work on your own. You might not get a fully-developed syllabus in high school courses, but even a scaled-down, simplified version can be useful as a map of the course and an aid to planning your time (for instance, it should tell you when a final project/paper is due.) Sometimes, the instructor will just talk about what will be happening for the coming week. That’s your syllabus; catch it. </p>
<p>Do you have a place to study? A desk, a lamp, a chair, some quiet space, a snack when you need it? Do what you can to make this a reality if you don’t have it already. Get earplugs if necessary. Look at your daily schedule. How much do you need to study each day, and where are the available times? Work on structuring your free (non-study) time so that you have the time you need, when you need it. </p>
<p>Maybe you will end up mentioning your family life in your college admission essay. You would be recognized as an achiever, not a “whiner” if you were able to write that you had made connections to people who could help you; that you had found/made a place in which you could do your work; that you had a long-term plan for your high school career, and were working very hard on it. You could write, as you have here, that academic achievement was your path, your road to fulfillment as a person. If your academic record and your letters of recommendation tell the admissions committee that all this is true, you would be a strong candidate for admission to Reed and to many other colleges. Your future is out there, but it’s also in your everyday life, your actions and choices now. Do your best, use what is available, and don’t go it alone if you don’t have to. There is a saying that “the wildest colts become the best horses.” But this happens only when the colt recognizes how to get what it wants without being broken.</p>