Education is something I took for granted growing up. It wasn’t until I reached high school that I realized I was lucky to be receiving one. Throughout elementary and middle school, I was able to get good grades without putting much effort into my work. Every year my teachers told me that I was a great student with lots of potential. However, I was never rewarded for my work, but my grades. As a result, I felt pressured to do everything right the first time, rather than putting all my effort into an assignment and learning from my mistakes. This had consequences by the time I reached high school. The work became harder and I struggled understanding some of the material. Whenever I was faced with a topic that I didn’t understand right away,
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The first quarter of the year, I failed Math and English. I had never failed a class in my entire life. My parents were extremely disappointed when they saw my report card, but not nearly as disappointed as I was. I didn’t know how I could recover from that because I grew up believing that asking for help was wrong, but I knew I had to do something. I tried putting more effort into my work, but I was still struggling. Those grades, those numbers, haunted me for the rest of the year, causing me to become anxious, and therefore it was difficult to focus in class. In Math, I eventually gained the courage to ask a few classmates for help when I needed it, and by fourth quarter, my teacher. In English, I didn’t know what it was that I didn’t understand, so I never knew what questions to ask. As the fourth quarter came to a close, I had a 60 in English. I needed to raise my grade nine points to pass for the year. My teacher had two grades to put in-- my final exam, and a research paper that was worth one-third of the quarter grade. I never did very well on essays in that class, and my teacher didn’t give any feedback on the content of my research paper rough draft, so I didn’t believe I did well enough to pass. I was tempted not to take the final exam because I believed that there was no way I could pass for the year, but I tried my best
The first quarter of the year, I failed Math and English. I had never failed a class in my entire life. My parents were extremely disappointed when they saw my report card, but not nearly as disappointed as I was. I didn’t know how I could recover from that because I grew up believing that asking for help was wrong, but I knew I had to do something. I tried putting more effort into my work, but I was still struggling. Those grades, those numbers, haunted me for the rest of the year, causing me to become anxious, and therefore it was difficult to focus in class. In Math, I eventually gained the courage to ask a few classmates for help when I needed it, and by fourth quarter, my teacher. In English, I didn’t know what it was that I didn’t understand, so I never knew what questions to ask. As the fourth quarter came to a close, I had a 60 in English. I needed to raise my grade nine points to pass for the year. My teacher had two grades to put in-- my final exam, and a research paper that was worth one-third of the quarter grade. I never did very well on essays in that class, and my teacher didn’t give any feedback on the content of my research paper rough draft, so I didn’t believe I did well enough to pass. I was tempted not to take the final exam because I believed that there was no way I could pass for the year, but I tried my best