Throughout my early high school career, I was unstoppable in math. When I got to calc is when it started to challenge me. Things weren’t clicking, and everything I knew was pure memorization. I ended up really close with my teacher, and I was able to go to him with any question I had. He put a lot of his time and effort into making sure I understood what I was learning. Mr. Hayes helped me earn my ‘A’ in his class, helped me build up the confidence to earn my 3 or 4 on the exam.
After the exam, I counted down the days until we got our scores. I began going around telling everyone that I had this test in the bag. At exactly 4:00 am, when scores were released, I logged into College Board. I kept refreshing the page because it seemed impossible. I got a 1! I called Mr. Hayes and cried to him for an hour about how I was going to give up on math. (Embarrassing, right?) He gave me the much needed pep talk, assured me that my effort in his class did not reflect a 1.
Mr. Hayes was wrong, I had no idea what I was doing. His pep talk led me to take calculus BC, because if you pass the BC exam, it overrides your score for AB. Reviewing calculus AB with a new teacher made for a much more sturdy foundation of calculus to build upon. I felt great. I was excited to go to class everyday and learn, and I completely ditched all of my testing anxiety from calculus AB.
When I got my score this year, I still reacted with tears. (A lot of them). The College Board website took an eternity to load, and eventually a 3 appeared on the screen. It represented all the work that I put into learning calculus.
It’s okay to recognize that no matter how much effort you put into something, you don’t always get the outcome that you want. Failure is okay, and it’s best to allow it to motivate yourself to work even harder. Calculus AB and BC were by a landslide, the hardest classes I’ve taken. They took a lot out of me, but it was worth the trial and error. You can’t learn without a struggle, and sometimes that struggle is the best way to improve.
