Monday. 5 a.m. Pitch black outside: The beginning of a long day. She drags herself out of bed and scrambles to find the lamp switch to turn on the light. As the morning sky starts to fade into a lighter shade of dark blue, senior Meghan Qualls throws on her sweatshirt and heads downstairs.
“I love to be busy,” Qualls said. “It helps me gain more experience for college.”
Now 6 a.m, she grabs her book bag and leaves for school. The sun peeks through the faded sky. Qualls gets out of the car and heads to school for a day of work.
“I take a lot of courses,” Qualls said. “But at the end of the day it doesn’t really feel like it.”
Qualls takes all AP courses. Her schedule consists of AP chemistry, training, AP physics, and debate. However, those are only what she takes at Legacy. She also takes Statistics and English 4 at TCC, and AP Spanish online. Qualls should only be a junior, but because she has taken these extra courses she is able to skip a grade and graduate early. “After I graduate this spring, I’m going to do a semester or a year at TCC and then will transfer either to UTA or Odessa to pursue a career in medicine.”
“I think I am fully capable of moving on to bigger and better things that aren’t offered in high school,” Qualls said.
Qualls feels that participating in different activities around school helps her give back to her school because the clubs that she participates in raise spirit and money for our school.
“I participate in extracurricular activities because I think that it’s a good way to be involved with Legacy,” Qualls said. “Being involved makes me feel like I am apart of something bigger than just high school.”
Aside from all the classes she takes, Qualls also participates in the Key Club and the Sports Medicine program.
“I do all of this extra work to better prepare myself for college. And I do sports medicine training because it gives me an outlet to help others,” Qualls said.
Hard work is something she has been taught from the time she was a six years old.
“My parents have always wanted me to do my best. They are my motivation,” she said. “I want to give them everything they want and deserve because they’ve always given it to me.”
Mrs. Qualls and her daughter are very close, she has always pushed her to accomplish her goals.
“We encourage Meghan to do her best, and she does,” Mrs. Qualls said. “I’m extremely proud of her for doing all the things she has done and continues to do to accomplish her goals. She is sweet, caring, smart, helpful, beautiful, and as her parent I couldn’t be more proud.”
Grandma Vicki • Oct 14, 2014 at 12:05 pm
Meghan is awesome. One of my wonderful grandchildren.