Matthew Leary

When talking about high school, there seems to be two kinds of people: the ones that can make it through, do the work and pass, and the people like me who it just seems like high school wasn’t cut out for them. High school just was not one of my top priorities while I was in it.

At Berkeley High, going to school was a joke. There are so many kids that it seems like you don’t even matter. Actually, when it comes down to it, you don’t matter because you really could get away with “whatever” all the time. That “whatever” for me was skipping class. I just simply never went. As soon as I started skipping, I couldn’t stop. That really piles up fast after a couple of weeks, and it’s really detrimental to your grades. Since my grades dropped so fast, I just felt like not going anymore, which eventually lead up to me dropping out altogether.

Fast forward a whole year and I was a dropout realizing I needed to have some kind of future. When I moved to Oakland, my mom told me about this program at the East Oakland Youth Development Center where I could get my GED. I thought that sounded like a perfect plan, so I started going to the class. As soon as I started taking her class, Ms. Anana told me that I had the potential to finish the GED program quickly. I went to her class for about two months and then took the test. I passed the exam and now I’m working on getting a job, going to college and getting my life on the right track.

Matthew Leary

2010 GED Graduate