Signs posted up and down the school hallway didn’t let me forget: Snowball Dance-Next Friday Night! No one would be asking me, the junior high school outcast. My face was ruined, and my balance was off—I had seizures without warning. All these were making my middle school life miserable. I kept my head down as I hurried to the classroom.

I stepped into the office where my teacher Mrs Barrett waited. She learned that my grandmother had been teaching me to sew for years, but none of the other kids in the class knew it. Mrs Barrett called me up to her desk. “A lot of girls need help with changes on their dresses for the Snowball Dance. I thought you could help me after school, ” she said. “Sure,” I said. Together with Mrs Barrett, I sewed buttons, shortened some sleeves, and lengthened others.

Teresa, one of the most popular girls, came by to pick up her dress. “Roberta designed and sewed it by hand,” Mrs Barrett told her. “It’s fashionable! Thanks. You must have added this brilliant belt,” she said. “I tied ribbons to the end of a pearl necklace,” I said, looking down at my shabby shoes. Teresa didn’t get crowned at the dance, but her Snowball Dance dress was the talk of the school during the following week. Word quickly spread that I was actually good at something. Soon the girls were coming to me and Mrs Barrett for custom-made dresses. “We should organize a fashion show,” Mrs Barrett said one day. We asked the girls in the office and they all wanted to participate. We had a packed auditorium for the show.

“This fashion show was a great success, and better than any dance could be. I think we pushed back the boundaries of fashion, ” Mrs Barrett said after the fashion show.

Those weren’t the only boundaries we pushed back. Later, Mrs Barrett encouraged me to run for student body president. “The kids have known your talent, ” she said. And I was elected president of the grade. I must say it’s my luck to meet Mrs Barrett in my life.

My name is Michelle Rogers. For most of my life I had been fighting with my body weight. I was either gaining weight or trying to lose it. I wasn’t happy with myself, and I certainly wasn’t able to fully enjoy life. Not only did I feel bad physically, but I felt terrible emotionally. I also knew I wasn’t able to be the best I could be, and with failure after failure in losing weight, I just felt so hopeless to make it.

One day in 2008, I was looking through ads online and saw a treadmill (跑步机) for $100. This time I decided to start small and keep it doable. The first week I started walking 15 minutes on the treadmill at a fixed time every day. The next week I did 16 minutes. Each week I added a minute. Gradually, I increased speed as well as time. Once I got to 30 minutes, the weight started dropping off.

I didn’t lose weight at first, but I didn’t give up like I did in the past. I realized I started feeling better. My legs were getting stronger. I didn’t feel painful like I used to when I got up from my desk. All the efforts I’d been putting into fitness made me want to start eating healthier, too. I began with small changes as well. After these years I started listening to my body. It was refusing food and habits that were bad for me.

Today, the extra weight is gone. I still exercise every morning. I look and feel the best I have never done. Every area of my life has improved and benefited from this change in me. Not only do I have my youthful energy, looks and health back, but also I have more confidence than I have ever had.

Graduating from high school is a milestone event. Most students are 18 when they graduate, but one Pennsylvania boy from Bensalem, a suburb of Philadelphia, just graduated and he is only nine and he is one of the youngest ever to do so.

David Balogun recently received his diploma from the Reach Cyber Charter (特许)School in Harrisburg where he was studying remotely. He has already started taking college courses. Besides being excellent in school, David loves computer programming, science, martial arts, and playing the piano.

David’s parents have advanced degrees but it is demanding to raise a child with an extraordinary intellectual gift. “I had to get outside of the box.” David’s mother, Ronya Balogun, told the local television station. “Playing pillow fights when you’re not supposed to, throwing the balls in the house. He’s a 9-year-old with a brain that just has the capacity to understand and comprehend a lot of concepts that are beyond his years and sometimes beyond my understanding.”

Putting David in the charter school was a no-brainer for his parents. “When he heard the STEM program, at seven years old, he was jumping up and down. I said ‘Okay, this is where we’re going, and this is what we’re doing’. He loved it from the first moment. It’s been an amazing journey,” she added.

David’s remarkable education began two years ago, when he became a student at the charter school. Shortly after he began attending the school, David placed out of the elementary and middle school courses and began high school.

David already knows that he wants to be an astrophysicist (天体物理学家). But he has to complete his education first. While he has already completed a semester at Buck County Community College, his parents are researching college and university options that will be more challenging. They are looking into Ivy League schools including the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Harvard, but since David is still only nine, he can’t live on campus.