Hi, my name is Jaedon Hanchard and when I was in tenth grade I took the class AP Biology and when I tell you I did not understand anything, I mean I did not understand ANYTHING. I always struggled in the class, there were times that I believed that I understood something but when it came to quizzes and test it showed that I obviously did not. I wanted to be able to understand what we were doing in class so I did study…sometimes at least. I sometimes even went to the office hours that the biology teacher held after school, even though I will admit that I did not pay attention that much even at those office hours. The toughest thing about this class though was that it was double blocked which meant that I had it every day. So I went from learning about something that I did not understand today, to learning something completely different that I STILL did not understand the next day. I was also sick a lot during the first semester so I missed school on important lessons at times. This continued on for the entirety of the first semester and it was terrible. At the end of the first semester, I ended up failing AP Biology by a few points. Since I am apart of a Magnet School, I had to appeal to be allowed to come back for the second semester. The administration allowed me to come back to the school and I was even allowed to drop down to normal Magnet Biology but I did not want to do that. I wanted to prove that I am not a quitter and that I could pass this class with at least a B. As I was saying, the administration had allowed me to come back to Magnet but to do so I had to complete multiple quizzes over a break on USATestPrep. They also gave me a class that was for me to study and complete any work that I received from AP Biology. Once school had started back up for the second semester I was actually more focused, not only because I wanted to prove to myself that I can understand and pass AP Biology and even more important to me was that if I failed AP Biology for the second semester that I would be kicked out of the Magnet program. So I definitely buckled down for that half of the semester. I went to my teacher’s office hours once or twice EVERY week even if I thought that I understood things because I could not take any more chances. I also studied more, I studied alone and I studied in groups with people who were apart of my class. While doing that I ended up finding biology interesting as time went on. I find it so interesting that I actually plan to major in Biology for college. I ended up passing AP Biology with a B and I believe that the struggles that I went through back then have helped me become better in school right now.
