The Blue and White met with Staff Writer Priscille Saintfleur, a Senior here at Apopka High School. We discussed the times Priscille had encountered challenges during her time here at Apopka and if she had questioned any ideas or beliefs she had.

A time I faced a challenge would be in my Sophomore year [in] AP World History. I didn’t practice time management which left me with a multitude of unsubmitted assignments. In the end, I was able to submit the work and ended up passing. When I did all of that, I learned that time management is necessary and from that day on I kept a planner of specific assignments that I needed to do each day or how long I have before I had to submit the assignment.

A time I challenged a belief or idea was when I was researching colleges and universities, I believed that only the greatest get into the top schools and those schools are only guaranteed success begin to falter. Students that maintain or surpass a 4.0 GPA score [in] the 90th percentile and have exceptional extracurriculars still got rejected. While others who don’t have similar achievements get accepted. Over the past couple of years, college admission rates have decreased drastically meaning that you would have to do more now than the past alumni. What was considered satisfactory back then, may get you rejected from the same school now. An example of this would be FSU, which is a school I was planning on going to, I still do, but I saw that in less than ten years their admission rates have gone from over 50% to about over 30% as of 2022. Additionally, I have met people who have gone to poorly rated colleges working in careers such as doctors and physician assistants while others who went to high-rated colleges, work in jobs that are often seen as less than desirable. Either way, neither of them is seen as less intelligent or diligent to me, but it goes to show that success is more on an individual basis rather than what school you go to.

A realization that sparked growth was that managing time would allow me to do more. I still don’t do it sometimes but when I do the majority of the tasks are complete.

I can continue to grow by seeing when I add too much to my list and when I don’t do enough so I can learn to do exactly how much I am capable of. Sometimes I can push the limits, but not to the point where the majority of the tasks are incomplete or not done.