My name is Zachary Tobias and I was born and raised on the south side of Chicago, IL. Growing up on the southside seemed pretty chill, and I felt as if I was raised in a good neighborhood. I was raised by a single mom, and my grandparents took good care of me and some uncles here and there when my mom would be off to work or my grandparents were out of town or working.
My mother and I lived with my grandparents from when I was born until about 2010. My grandparents lived in a neighborhood on the southside called Pill Hill. During that time a lot of doctors and Jewish people lived in my neighborhood. My elementary school that I attended was local and walking distance from my grandparents house and I was usually taken to school by my grandparents, mostly my grandpa. I went to an elementary school called St. Ailbe which still exists today, a few blocks away from my grandparent’s house. There I made many friends and they all looked like me. Throughout my time at St. Ailbe most of the kids were from the neighborhood or surrounding neighborhoods. We all connect very well and I made some friends that I still keep in touch with today. I was involved in the band and choir in my time at St. Ailbe. My favorite instrument I played was the saxophone for three years but I also did the clarinet for 4 years. As I got closer to graduation in 2019,I looked back and realized all the friends I made and most still keep in touch but some of us fell off. Knowing everyone in my classes or even the whole school was cool and people who looked like you and understood the struggles of growing up with a single mom or a single dad made you feel like you had a deeper connection to just casually talking to people in the halls. It was about getting to know them and vice versa. It was around this time when I had moved from living with my grandparents to my mother and I moving to a new place closer to where I would eventually be going to high school. It was about 2018 when I had found out about my other siblings and my father. When I got the news on how he was never in my life and left me at a very young age it hurt me so bad inside. Being one of five kids on my father’s side I will be the first to attend college. My transition from 8th grade to freshman year was a struggle. Coming from a small elementary school of only 18 in my graduating class to now having 40 kids in a class my freshman year was a huge change. Making friends wasn’t as big of a challenge as the work was. Throughout the year, it felt as if I was taking steps backwards instead of forward. The work assigned was hard, I was not used to having 7 different teachers compared to the 3 I had in middle school. Going to a school where 650 kids attended, everything and everyone was unfamiliar which made it a tough adjustment. The biggest regret of my freshman year was not having the courage to ask my teachers for help.
Having thirty-five kids in a class and one teacher was hard because I was scared to ask questions because I was afraid of being ridiculed by my fellow classmates. As I finished my first high school semester I ended with a 1.7 GPA and then the pandemic occurred . As I heard the news, I thought to myself ”what’s going to happen with school, my friends and Friday night football games”? Once the second semester began, we started e-learning and I took that as an opportunity to focus on my schoolwork, so I put my thinking cap on and went to work and day by day , week by week I saw improvements, my D’s turned into C’s, my C’s turned into B’s, and with that my second semester ended with me having a 2.7 GPA. Due to my asthma, I was at high risk to catch COVID-19, so when school started back up, I had a doctor’s note saying that I was excused from attending school because I was at a higher risk of catching covid. I worked 100% remote for my entire sophomore year. While I did miss my friends , I knew that my grades were more important, I wanted to attend a good college and get a good job right after I graduated and I knew that the only way I could achieve that was with hard work and determination. As the semester went on, I was excelling in all my classes. I had A’s and Bs’s and when final exams came around I passed every single one. I finished my second semester with A’s and B’s and nothing lower, I finished with a 3.4 GPA and I made the B’ Honor Roll. Seeing that on my report card made me feel proud, to see that my hard work paid off and it pushed me to work harder in the second semester. Second semester started and I continued what I was doing , staying focused and getting all my work done and I ended with a 3.2. My cumulative went up and I ended my sophomore year on the B honor roll again. Around this time unfortunately, I lost my grandmother to COVID-19. This impacted my mental health tremendously, it felt as if I was dreaming when I got the news. It was May of 2021 and we had her funeral. Knowing my grandmother on my father’s side for 16 years she was such an uplifting and spiritual person. She always comes to support me at all my school events and birthday parties. With this being said, it impacted me mentally and socially and this carried throughout my junior year. My grandmother on my fathers side of the family truly kept all of us closer and connected us more. When senior year came I was determined because I had a goal in mind and that was I wanted to graduate because I know my grandma would have been proud if she could have seen me walk across graduation in May of 2023.
