Tell me something awesome about yourself. Brag if you want. 🤗

I’ve already mentioned this a few times, but I was a severe alcoholic for 6 years. Quit cold turkey in November of 2016 and haven’t looked back since. I’ve been officially sober for 2 years 😌 I don’t miss it one bit.

I dropped out of HS when I was 16 due to severe anxiety and to care for my sick grams. I didn’t go back to school until my late 20’s. I was terrified and felt stupid. I didn’t think I could do it. Math was my biggest hurdle. I enrolled in a GED course right before the test was about to change. Everyone was panicking about how hard the new test was gonna be, but I was DETERMINED. I studied for the test for about a year and a half before I decided to take it. I passed everything with flying colors EXCEPT the math. I failed by TWO points. I was beyond devastated, but I went back to the drawing board and kept studying. After about six weeks of studying I took the math again and failed by eight points. Sadly I got discouraged and ended up dropping out and then six months later I had to move out of NY, which meant I couldn’t transfer my scores to a different state. I had to take the entire test over again.

So anyway when I moved out of NY to PA I was incredibly homesick and I fell into a pretty deep depression for about a year. I got help for my depression and I decided to enroll into another GED program. I told myself that this time around would be different. You know all this material already this is basically just a refresher course for you. I got all the other subjects out of the way, so I could focus on the math. Passed them all without any problem. So about 3 months into the program I decided to schedule the math test and on June 8th, 2017, 45 mins after I took the test I found out I passed. I was actually helping my mom in the bathroom when I found out lmao. I still get emotional when I think about it. Because I fought SO HARD for that piece of paper. It was a LONG tumultuous road to get that damn piece of paper. Mental illness, addiction, moving out of the apartment I lived in for 29 years, my brother almost dying from a suicide attempt, heartbreak, racist teachers. I’m just glad I persevered and didn’t let life get the best of me.

And can I just say that this was an INCREDIBLY hard test. Like people hear GED and think it’s no big deal. WRONG! My student success coach graduated from penn state and he would say to me “there’s no way I could pass this test without studying” Even the reading part is hard, because they give you like these super looooooong 18th century texts and poems to decipher. That sh!$ was so stressful! lmao 😩😂