{"id":94,"date":"2018-05-22T21:47:48","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T21:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/dev\/tempe\/2018\/05\/22\/y-member-spotlight-braden-smith\/"},"modified":"2018-05-22T21:47:48","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T21:47:48","slug":"y-member-spotlight-braden-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/tempe\/2018\/05\/22\/y-member-spotlight-braden-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Y Member Spotlight: Braden Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came to the Y because I had dropped out of school my junior year because I didn\u2019t have the will to get up out of bed anymore or do any of the homework. My sister has a mental illness that caused it to be very hard for anyone in our family to try and continue and live a \u201cnormal\u201d life and at the peak of the trouble I had no want to do anything anymore. Well-being is being able to do at least a little of what you enjoy to do every day.<\/p>\n

The Y helped me achieve this because it allowed me to do as much work as I could in a reasonable time frame and then go home without any more work.<\/h3>\n

So, then I could focus on what I wanted to do in life and deal with wrapping my head around the situation about my sister and how it not only affected me but most importantly everyone else in my family.<\/p>\n

My family and I were a little bit on edge when I joined the Y.\u00a0 With me being able to get my high school diploma because of the Y really helped settle down the extra tension that was caused because of high school.<\/p>\n

My goals when I joined the Y were to get my high school diploma and have better grades within a reasonable time frame. The Y helped me achieve that goal in the exact way that I wanted it to happen. The challenges I had are a little bit too personal to say. However, having been able to go to the Y helped me overcome many of them.<\/p>\n

I participated in the iLearn program<\/a> and the gym at the Y.<\/p>\n

My family and I have been impacted positively because of all the flexibility and support that the Y and the people at the Y have given us. When things happened that made it so that I couldn\u2019t show up to school the Y was much more understanding than the high school.<\/p>\n

I was able to graduate high school because of the Y.<\/p>\n

After joining the Y, I have become much more productive and confident in the things that I do. These changes have very positively impacted my life.<\/p>\n

My teacher, Ms. Buck, was a nice and supportive person. She was helpful with advice to give when I presented her with a problem that I was having.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never felt a strong sense of belonging. Most of the time I don\u2019t think of it as a bad thing.\u00a0 Thanks to the Y, I have become a little more connected with others, which is quite a lot more than I used to be.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve learned the things that the classes taught me, but I also learned about people and myself.<\/p>\n

The thing that I like the most about the Y is that it was there for me when I had weird and uncommon circumstances that couldn\u2019t be dealt with by continuing work at traditional public schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came to the Y because I had dropped out of school my junior year because I didn\u2019t have the will to get up out of bed anymore or do any of the homework. My sister has a mental illness that caused it to be very hard for anyone in our family to try and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ymca"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/tempe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/tempe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/tempe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/tempe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/tempe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/tempe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/tempe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/tempe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/tempe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}