Personal Narrative: AP Physics

It was the second week of school junior year, in my third-period physics class. The bell rang shrilly, signaling the commencement of my own living hell. The teacher - a small, wiry man with a bit too much bite - sat in the back of the room. Grade book, and red pen in hand, he waited impatiently with a cold glare. The clock's ticking was loud in my ears and mixed with my rapid heartbeat. His eyes brushed down a list of names quickly and came to a sudden halt. With a glance toward me, he called me to the front of the room to present my work from the day before. And then it wasn't just him and me, it was him and me and every other sharp-faced person in the room. They were experienced "AP students," the best of the best, I was a mere peasant in their presence. Reluctantly, I made my way to the front of the room and with an unsure hand slid my work under the projector screen. I watched as the faces of my scholarly peers averted their gaze, as if to mourn my loss, and the teacher looked on in disgust. At that moment, I swore that I would always regret taking AP physics. I would have never guessed that not even a year later, I would have come to be eternally grateful for a painful year of failures and embarrassment. …show more content…
I'd never been one to accept my failures and hardships, and my goal at the time had been perfection; an ambition that proved to be too large a wall to scale. Not having the ability to reach the grade levels I preferred, was, unfortunately, just what I needed to shove me back into the reality of