Personal Narrative: My Experience With Mental Illness

Most of my Junior year experience was awful. It’s already a dreadful year, as at my school you start experiencing the dreaded AP courses, you have to start looking at colleges, you’re being bombarded with more and more responsibilities, and everyone feels as though they’re on the brink of explosion. Tensions are high, the ideas of being calm and stress free lost to the wind. For me, I had to deal with another issue that was more stressful than all of my other problems combined: illness. Over the course of the year I missed 38 days, which doesn’t include the many days I came to school sick due to familial pressure. I still don’t know why I was sick so much in one year, just the guess that my immune system tanked after getting unlucky a couple of times. …show more content…
I take pride in being in somewhat good shape, having had just finished a Cross Country season when I began to get sick often. Being bedridden for days on end doing nothing but homework and talking to friends online isn’t particularly great for your spirit, either. My grades tanked. It’s hard to do well in a class where you’re absent a quarter of the time and you’re constantly trying to recover rather than proactively learn. This also hit hard; I was / am considered a “good student” and I try to actively keep all of my (mostly rigorous) classes at 85 or above. Coming out of Pre-Calc with a 75 after taking an 86 for Algebra II, which I didn’t like either,