The last three months of my junior year were easily the most difficult months of school that I ever had endured, by the time I ran into summer, I felt as if I had been lacerated from every direction. I had survived multiple honors classes, math, chemistry, and a commitment to forensics. It was also the first time in my life that I had to balance a job on top of my education. In the last two weeks of the school year, I approached all of my commitments with an incredible dour demeanor, and it caused my performance in both academics and my job to suffer. My algebra II grade ended up plunging by an entire letter grade before I finished the school year, and I was making hardly anything in tips.

When the school year ended, my struggles at Village Inn did not. I came to work each day immediately envisioning of the time of when I got off work, and dreading each of my given responsibilities. I was never close to being fired, however, I only did enough to keep a hold onto my job.

In the middle of july, my parents and I went on a seven day cruise, in that time, I had absolutely no reservations about who I was. This was because I was never going to see any of these people ever again, I easily had one of the best experiences in my life's entirety. On the last day of the cruise, I sit back and shared an incredibly deep conversation with my father. Within the conversation, we conversed about the past, the future, and how soon the entire perplexion of my life was about to change. It was somewhere around this time that a radical thought burst into my mind, "What if I approached every day as if I were on a cruise ship?" The more I reflected upon this idea, the more excited I became. What would happen if I attempted to have fun on each day of my life because of the simple fact that I only have such a limited time to have fun? What if I acted exactly like the person I was inside because, in the end, the people who are of no importance to me will eventually fade away, while the people who matter will stay beside me.

This simple shift in my mindset yielded incredible results for me not only in work, but, in life as a whole. I approached every work day with the goal to have fun, and, it seemed as if every day I did. I actually began to have customers request for my service, and before I departed, I realized that I actually had started to enjoy working at Village Inn. I still attempt to derive fun out of each day of school, while I am not always successful, this year has easily been the most fulfilling year I have ever experienced. This may not be the case when it comes to my academic performance, but, I feel I have grown more as a person than I have on any other year.

Being a tigger has helped me find enjoyment on each day of my life, and pehaps more imporantly, it's helped me look past the day to day anxiety of high school and focus upon what's actually important within life. It is incredibly easy to become sad within the realm of high school, however, if everyone focused so intently on the mud upon their shoes, they would miss the sun ascending upon the horizon.