My story of academic struggle is a recent one. Last year, I decided to double up on math, and take pre-calculus as well as statistics. A few weeks into the course, my pre-calc teacher announced that the school would be making the switch to Eureka’s math program. The students, including myself, were rather upset at this news — after all, we had already gotten into the material, and we would already be shaking up the program?
I would like to say it got easier from there, and the worry was all for naught, but that wouldn’t make for an interesting story. In reality, I was taken aback by how difficult the work was. I was used to being a straight-A, four-point-something, honors-and-AP student. Academics just always came naturally to me…but this just didn’t vibe.
I put hours of my free time into studying the given resources, and extrapolated from there. I looked at videos and lectures trying to explain the concepts, I memorized formulas that would be helpful, and I talked with my classmates and teacher. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t wrap my head around the ideas, specifically trigonometry. I was close to giving up — I had already relinquished any hope of maintaining my straight-A streak.
But I persevered, and I’m glad I did. Regardless of how often I thought it would never click, I kept trying. I did my homework on time, and walked into tests and quizzes with a good attitude.
Despite how fatefully poetic it would be, I never had a “Eureka!” moment. I studied, and memorized, and used all the resources I had at my disposal, and I did okay. I learned that sometimes your best is all you can do, and that’s okay. It was a little disappointing to get a B rather than an A, but that’s still a success in my book.
Oh, and perhaps the most important lesson of all: I learned to never double up on math again.
