Some people view educational success as going to a private elementary school, middle school, and high school, followed by graduating from a private college (Ivy League is a plus!). That plan didn't work for me.
I attended a Catholic preschool before starting Kindergarten at our local Montessori school. My parents (presumably) enrolled me in the Montessori program because I was an intellectually gifted child and felt like it would be a better environment for me than a public school would be.
When I was in third grade, I asked my parents if I could go to public school the following year. While I enjoyed school, I felt like I needed a change for several reasons. First, I felt like I wasn't being challenged enough. Boredom is never a good thing, and I figured that public school might have something different to offer. Second was my classmates. I was one of maybe a dozen children in my grade, and most of them were girls. I found myself making friends with younger students in an attempt to expand my social circle. Also, as I found out later (not until the end of middle school/beginning of high school, really), I tend to have stronger relationships with males than I do with females. The girls I was friends with all came from relatively well-off families, rode horses together at the same barn, and were otherwise very girly and preppy. They all went to private middle and high schools, and are still close friends. I just didn't fit. And I knew this even as a nine-year-old.
That Fall, I started at one of the local elementary schools. I got to meet all my neighbors with whom I had never really socialized before and ride on the big, yellow schoolbus with them. I started playing soccer and met even more friends there. Most of my classmates had known each other since Kindergarten, but it was okay. Even though I was a latecomer, they still accepted me as a friend. As it turns out, soccer wasn't for me - but I tried out softball the following Spring, and that stuck with me through high school. The only downside was that my expository writing skills were essentially nonexistent; I had only ever learned creative writing while at the Montessori school. I faked it pretty well through fourth grade, but I struggled once fifth grade came around. Luckily my homeroom/english/history teacher was great at her job and stayed after school with me to help me catch up to my classmates. To this day I still hate writing assignments, but I can still get through them fairly well. It was also here that I started playing the flute, which I have continued through college and see as a lifelong passion.
Both the elementary schools funneled into the new "intermediate" school (for 5th and 6th grades), so I had even more new friends to meet and with whom to develop relationships. I loved public school because, while there were still my peers who I didn't get along with, there were so many people that it was easy to find people with whom I shared common interests.
I really enjoyed middle school and high school because we were separated into different classes based on our skill levels. While we weren't directly told this until high school, it was still fairly apparent. I was always placed in "honors" level classes and was surrounded by peers who demanded similar levels of challenges as I did. Some of my classmates left to go to private middle or high schools; maybe that's what was best for them, or maybe they had the same thoughts that I did as a third-grader but the other way around.
As I was looking at colleges, I found the University of Pennsylvania. I fell in love with Philly and everything it had to offer. I applied to the Wharton School of Business, early decision - and I received a nicely-worded rejection letter in the mail. Maybe they knew better than I did that private school just wasn't for me. So, I applied to Temple. I was accepted to their Business Honors Program at the Fox School of Business, a special division of the university-wide honors program that has stricter requirements for admission. I joined the marching band and have had the opportunity to travel with them to Washington, DC, Norfolk, VA, Lowell, MA, and Salt Lake City, UT for postseason games. I studied abroad at University College Dublin's Quinn School of Business - one of the best business schools in the world - and am still graduating in eight semesters, something almost unheard of for my major. Speaking of, I'm graduating cum laude with one of about seven majors with a zero-percent unemployment rate, which is also one of if not the highest paying undergraduate degrees that Temple offers.
In my mind, success has very little to do with the supposed quality of one's education. I found success in a public educational system because I am ambitious and push myself to greatly exceed what is expected of me. Just because you have a fancier, more expensive education does not mean that you are smarter or more intelligent than I am, or that you know more than I do. Education should provide the best possible learning environment for each individual student. For some that is a private education, for others it's a public one. Neither is better than the other when they both can produce the same quality product.
