You don’t want to sound as if you’re only interested in the piece of paper. You want the knowledge that piece of paper represents so that you can do what you want to do.

This is a parenthetical statement and would do best in parenthesis.

“I finally realized (after learning many lessons I cannot fit into this essay) school is important ”

Cut the adverb. I came close. I was thinking about dropping out of high school. She was large. I feel stupid.

In general, a strong verb is better than a verb and an adverb.

awkward and also dangling.

I’d just cut this.

Change this.

“She was the cause of many of her problems – and I learned from that.”

“Anyways” and the summarizing sentence trivialize her and thus trivialize the lesson you learned.

I – and I suspect many other English scholars – tend to find exclamation points off-putting. They make the tone sound childish, like the txt message of a 15 year old girl, rather than authoritative.

“her size alone made me uncomfortable” would set up the rest of the paragraph well.

In general, you can cut adverbs. It’s better to have a strong verb 99% of the time instead of weakening it with an -ly word (slightly) or a word like rather.

Use the instead of “this” here – it will help you avoid antecedent errors in the future.

You see the contradiction here?

All throughout my life – a total of half a year – this sentence implies you are quite young.

“Throughout my life, like others before me, I have been a part of a mandatory attendance system that takes up half of each year”

or something to that effect.

Proper noun – capitalize it.