In May of 2015, I was diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. My life became a whirlwind of hospital visits, testing, and a constantly changing list of prescriptions. It took months of doctor visits and a wide range of diagnoses to finally be correctly diagnosed with P.O.T.S. The condition falls under the umbrella of dysautonomia and is characterized by a rise in heart rate exceeding thirty beats per minute when transferring from a sitting to standing position. The body’s difficulties in regulating the Autonomic Nervous System leads to patients like me suffering from fatigue, low blood pressure, nausea, exercise intolerance, syncope, difficulty concentrating, and chest pains. The frustration I felt with the majority of the
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I felt like I needed to prove that the disabled community is more than capable of succeeding. Although I have suffered numerous absences throughout the past two years of my high school career due to P.O.T.S., my love for learning has never faltered. When coursework did not come naturally to me, I relied on my worth ethic to push myself to learn the difficult material. Because of the difficulty with concentrating that is associated with P.O.T.S., I found myself having to take more time than I was used to in order to study. During my junior and senior year math classes (pre-calculus and calculus, respectively) I took extra time outside of the classroom to learn the material and to prepare myself for the next lesson. I supplemented my formal education with various educational resources that I found online. My thirst for knowledge has never been limited to the classroom. My love for learning has always been a strong motivating factor and at sixteen, I taught myself all the components of the human heart and the purpose that each component served. I did this because I was so fascinated during the appointments with my cardiologist that I felt I had to learn more. I loved listening to my heart and identifying the “lub dub” as the opening and closing of the …show more content…
Volunteering is part of being a National Honor Society Member, and I decided to use my love of learning to help others. From September 2016 to December 2016, I was asked to tutor a student twice weekly at Rochester Intermediate School. Our sessions would cover anything from his math and science homework to covering his English and history materials. We worked together to make his learning fun and exciting, while simultaneously improving the quality of his work and thus receiving better grades. I have always been one to “practice what I preach”, and the same effort I asked of him was the same effort that I expected of myself. When I was unhappy with my first ACT score, I demanded more of myself. I pushed myself to stay committed to the studying regimen that I had created. I took practice test after practice test, and analyzed each wrong answer to learn why it was wrong, and the incorrect thought processes that had led me to that answer. I analyzed and decoded the language used in the exam, and I was able to quickly decipher what exactly the question was asking of me. The long hours paid off, and my composite score jumped from a 28 to a 33, placing me in the 99th percentile of all test
I felt like I needed to prove that the disabled community is more than capable of succeeding. Although I have suffered numerous absences throughout the past two years of my high school career due to P.O.T.S., my love for learning has never faltered. When coursework did not come naturally to me, I relied on my worth ethic to push myself to learn the difficult material. Because of the difficulty with concentrating that is associated with P.O.T.S., I found myself having to take more time than I was used to in order to study. During my junior and senior year math classes (pre-calculus and calculus, respectively) I took extra time outside of the classroom to learn the material and to prepare myself for the next lesson. I supplemented my formal education with various educational resources that I found online. My thirst for knowledge has never been limited to the classroom. My love for learning has always been a strong motivating factor and at sixteen, I taught myself all the components of the human heart and the purpose that each component served. I did this because I was so fascinated during the appointments with my cardiologist that I felt I had to learn more. I loved listening to my heart and identifying the “lub dub” as the opening and closing of the …show more content…
Volunteering is part of being a National Honor Society Member, and I decided to use my love of learning to help others. From September 2016 to December 2016, I was asked to tutor a student twice weekly at Rochester Intermediate School. Our sessions would cover anything from his math and science homework to covering his English and history materials. We worked together to make his learning fun and exciting, while simultaneously improving the quality of his work and thus receiving better grades. I have always been one to “practice what I preach”, and the same effort I asked of him was the same effort that I expected of myself. When I was unhappy with my first ACT score, I demanded more of myself. I pushed myself to stay committed to the studying regimen that I had created. I took practice test after practice test, and analyzed each wrong answer to learn why it was wrong, and the incorrect thought processes that had led me to that answer. I analyzed and decoded the language used in the exam, and I was able to quickly decipher what exactly the question was asking of me. The long hours paid off, and my composite score jumped from a 28 to a 33, placing me in the 99th percentile of all test