Kayla Vu is an early 2022 graduate from Central Kitsap High School, she explains how graduating early affected her life in a positive way. 

Vu currently works at Burger King, and has been for about a year now. Now that she has graduated early she has been able to pick up more hours to earn more money. She says it feels amazing to graduate early and having more free time has affected her life in a positive way. 

Although she is happy to graduate early she said it has affected her social life. 

Since she’s not in school she has to wait a couple hours till her friends are out to be able to hangout. She also says since she’s not in school it’s harder to hangout with people because her friends are either cowworkers or students who can’t hangout super often and most of the time it doesn’t fit with her work schedule. 

“It definitly had a positive effect on my mental health. More time to focus on myself and a lot less stress” says Vu. Over one in three students in high school deal with some sort of mental health issue according to “Adolescent and School Health”. 

Vu was a resident at South Kitsap High School since her freshman year. She claims the environment was bad and she wanted something new. She also shouts out the staff and education to be horrible. She didn’t really get a new start at CK though. When she started and ended everyone was still wearing masks. 

Masks affected Vu’s social skills. She had a hard time reaching out to people because she was following COVID guidelines and didn’t really know how to interact. With Vu only having 2 classes she didn’t get the opportunity to talk to many people.

 Since South requires thirty-two credits and CK requires twenty-four credits Vu had extra credits allowing her to graduate early. She only had to do 5 months at CK with two classes a day. She doesn’t have any good memories considering her short time. 

Vu is no longer attending CK, but she is looking forward to the future. Since freshman year Vu has always wanted to go to prom. She was nervous when COVID struck that she wouldn’t be able to return to school or school wouldn’t re-open stopping prom from happening.