The following is an excerpt from a journal entry I wrote on June 23, 2015, reflecting on my junior year.
“I had many expectations for junior year. I was determined to be a fantastic student and first time officer. As the year progressed, these expectations ended up fading and the routines of everyday life became dull, so much so that by the new-year I had lost myself. I allowed my relationships to turn into acquaintances; I subjected myself to a pattern of non-improvement with my schoolwork. At one point I stopped fighting the never-ending escalator I was on, slowly declining into a void of failure.”
Enduring the hardship I like to call junior year, extended my knowledge on two concepts: independence and ignorance. Looking back further, it …show more content…
Despite my awareness, I ignored the first signs of failure, which started in AP Calculus, because I knew had the experience and mindset to succeed. Ignorance is not bliss, but finding solutions is; I needed to analyze the situation. Why was I failing? What do I need to do to help? The first question has multiple answers, the first being that I wasn’t honest with myself. I didn’t just initially decline failure; I prolonged the ignorance until I concluded the school year. It was my biggest defensive strategy yet. I was so scared of the idea of failing that I did the one thing that dug me into a deeper hole: deny. Confronting my failure should have been a given (facing problems was how I was raised), but I allowed my fears of disappointment cause more problems to arise. Due to my ignorance, I was unable to separate each category of my life: school, friends, family, and dance. Throughout rehearsal I was worrying about derivatives and shell method, during class I was reviewing choreography, and at the dinner table I was scrambling to catch up with friends on the phone. This big mistake has helped me learn one of the most important lessons I have learned so far- to focus on what is right in front of me. I needed to segregate Orchesis (my dance company) from math class, and family time from socializing with
“I had many expectations for junior year. I was determined to be a fantastic student and first time officer. As the year progressed, these expectations ended up fading and the routines of everyday life became dull, so much so that by the new-year I had lost myself. I allowed my relationships to turn into acquaintances; I subjected myself to a pattern of non-improvement with my schoolwork. At one point I stopped fighting the never-ending escalator I was on, slowly declining into a void of failure.”
Enduring the hardship I like to call junior year, extended my knowledge on two concepts: independence and ignorance. Looking back further, it …show more content…
Despite my awareness, I ignored the first signs of failure, which started in AP Calculus, because I knew had the experience and mindset to succeed. Ignorance is not bliss, but finding solutions is; I needed to analyze the situation. Why was I failing? What do I need to do to help? The first question has multiple answers, the first being that I wasn’t honest with myself. I didn’t just initially decline failure; I prolonged the ignorance until I concluded the school year. It was my biggest defensive strategy yet. I was so scared of the idea of failing that I did the one thing that dug me into a deeper hole: deny. Confronting my failure should have been a given (facing problems was how I was raised), but I allowed my fears of disappointment cause more problems to arise. Due to my ignorance, I was unable to separate each category of my life: school, friends, family, and dance. Throughout rehearsal I was worrying about derivatives and shell method, during class I was reviewing choreography, and at the dinner table I was scrambling to catch up with friends on the phone. This big mistake has helped me learn one of the most important lessons I have learned so far- to focus on what is right in front of me. I needed to segregate Orchesis (my dance company) from math class, and family time from socializing with