Last year I moved schools. It was my junior year in high school and I had a line of difficult classes ahead of me. I didn’t know a single person in the entire school, so it seemed like I was setting myself up for a disaster. My most difficult classes I had to take that year were AP chemistry and honors pre calculus.
I had always been a good student. I studied hard and I earned good grades for my hard work. But this year was different. Every day I would walk into class extremely nervous. I thought I knew what I was doing but once I was left to do problems on my own I struggled. Everything seemed to click when the teacher was talking. It all made perfect sense. But when it came to the homework and then the quizzes and tests I had no idea what to do and the grades reflected that.
I started to struggle. I’ve never struggled this much in school before. Why was I doing so bad? I was studying every night and taking good notes, but it seemed it wasn’t helping at all. I would ask around if anyone could help me in the class but no one else seemed to know that much either. But they were all getting a lot higher grades than me. So what was I doing wrong?
Eventually I went to my teachers for help. I went in early every morning and stayed late every day. They worked one on one with me on each problem and explained to me what I was supposed to do. Slowly but surly my grades started to improve. Not only did I start to feel more confident in myself but I found new ways to study and to help myself learn things. Asking for help was a very difficult decision for me, I was never one to ask for help when I needed it because I thought it would make me look unintelligent. But in reality it makes me smart. Smart enough to know when I need help and know exactly where I can find it.
