The hardest time I’ve ever had in school was by far seventh grade math. Due to difficult content, (at the time) a teacher who I could only describe as out to get me, and a surge of moody hormones, I was completely in danger of failing the class. I forgot to do assignments, leaving a rash of zeros across my transcript, and those that I did do were toilet-paper worthy. My grades struggled and slipped, falling steadily through the first semester down to a solid F. That Christmas break was a tough one – berated by my parents for grades I was only halfway responsible for, my condition slid from bad to worse and I fell into a sort of quasi-depression. The break wore on, but as it came to an end my mother came to me with a proposition: tutoring. I say “proposition” in the lightest sense of the word – I had no choice in the matter, which turned out to be my saving grace. Had I refused help, I most likely would have flunked out of the gifted program, and now in my senior year I’d be either flipping burgers or working on my GED. I remember the tutor, a place called Sylvan. They helped me greatly with my work, but first and foremost they helped me with motivation, my major problem. However, through them I also realized that the work was excessively difficult and confusing for a normal seventh grader, but the only way to deal with it at that point was to knuckle down and just struggle through it. And struggle I did, working my way through the curriculum and eventually ending up with a low B, saving my prospects of staying in the gifted program. The next year was a dream compared to that, and as time wore on I eventually came to realize that I had finally overcome the biggest hump in school that I had to up to that point. Life has become better, and at this point I’ve become an AP student with great SAT scores, and am ready to go off to the college that I want to, not the one that fate chooses for me.
