Maria Garcia woke up and realized shopping with friends wouldn’t
earn her a diploma
Gilroy – Maria Garcia appears to have it all together.
The fur-lined parka she sports perfectly compliments her pink-toned scarf, her make-up has been conservatively applied, not at all over the top. She spends her afternoons studying real estate with a Realtor in San Jose and plans to take the test when she turns 18.
After high school graduation she wants to attend San Francisco’s culinary school and become a wedding planner.
But most of Garcia’s 17 years weren’t spent looking ahead. Actually, during the majority of her high school career academics were an afterthought, often replaced by trips to the beach and shopping in San Jose.
Garcia’s academic apathy caught up to her quickly. As a freshman at Gilroy High School the 17-year-old said she barely ever went to class and when she did she seldom paid attention.
“I wasn’t really into school,” she said. “When I was in class I just felt like talking.”
Garcia’s chitchat and constant absenteeism got her kicked out of GHS. She moved in with her sister in Los Banos and began attending the continuation school as a sophomore.
But at the Los Banos school, Garcia discovered that so little was expected of her and that the other students were such low achievers, she was embarrassed to be a part of the student body. She managed to pump up the dismal 15 credits she had as a sophomore to 60.
And, even though she said she barely tried, she received the student of the month award. Still, her junior year Garcia moved back in with her parents in Gilroy and once again the playing hooky bug bit her.
“I just didn’t feel like going anymore,” she said.
But when Garcia began her senior year she realized if she continued skipping school and didn’t take the California Exit Exam seriously, she faced the mortifying prospect of becoming a “super senior” – the ironic term students use to refer to fifth-year seniors.
Garcia took the math section of the CAHSEE for the first time as a junior and scored a 335, 15 points below the required 350 needed to pass. Last week, Garcia learned that she’d received a 337 on the math retake she took in November.
In March, Garcia will take the CAHSEE math section for the third time and the English portion for the first time. If she fails to pass again she won’t graduate with the class of 2006. That looming deadline, has caused the longtime Gilroy resident to reevaluate her life.
Garcia remembers teachers and friends telling her way back in the eighth grade that she’d regret skipping school and screwing around. And, now at 17, the chatty teen knows they were right.
“I realize that, yeah you really are going to regret it,” she said.
All the time she spent away from school not only caused her to lose credits but also imperative instructional hours that would have helped her pass the CAHSEE.
But Garcia has changed her attitude, and even though she regrets her not-so-distant-past, she realizes it’s not too late.
“I wasn’t even trying and then I started thinking ‘what if I started to?'”
These days you’re more likely to see Garcia in her seat at Mt. Madonna High School than browsing the shops at the Westfield Oakridge mall. Instead of constantly conversing in class, she’s trying to channel those social skills into sales, of both homes and her future wedding planning services.
Garcia wasn’t exactly interested in studying to become a Realtor until her parents said they’d pay her for every hour she spent studying with a family friend in San Jose. Now she’s excited about receiving her license, selling houses, making some cash and one day attending a San Francisco culinary school and becoming a wedding planner.
In the meantime, Garcia has an immediate goal: passing the CAHSEE and graduating from high school.
Although she hasn’t taken the English portion yet, the senior is confident she’ll pass. It’s the math, specifically geometry and percentages, that worries her.
Still, Garcia refuses to even consider defeat.
“I haven’t really thought about what if I fail,” she said. “I think ‘I’m going to pass it.'”
Maria Garcia
– Age: 17
– Confidence level: Thinks she’ll pass the English section but isn’t sure about math.
– High school history: Attended Gilroy High School, continuation school in Los Banos and transferred to Mt. Madonna High School, Gilroy’s continuation school, as a junior.
– Family: Parents are divorced. Lives with mom and stepdad. Has two older sisters and two younger brothers. Parents didn’t know about CAHSEE until reading about her in the Dispatch.
– Attitude adjustment: She wasn’t going to class because she hated school before coming to Mt. Madonna. “I just didn’t like school. I didn’t like having to go to school all the time. I was just lazy about it. At Mt. Madonna the teacher’s just help you a lot and you can talk to them … Now I pay attention.”
– Goal: Attend San Francisco culinary school and become wedding planner.
