Personal Narrative

After all, math was one of my best subjects. I had never really had an experience where I just couldn't understand the concept of a math problem, of how it was solved and why. Our teachers has warned us back in elementary school, that one day we would hit an invisible wall and not ease through classes. That one day we would struggle with understanding a problem, a concept or even a subject. I had never believed them, thinking this would never happen to me, that I could somehow avoid this wall of confusion and just walk right through. But there I was, utterly confused and frustrated at a simple problem that everyone else could solve. Why was I not seeing it? Why couldn't I understand the solution? I asked myself. For the first time in my life I really struggled to get an A in a class. I had my sister tutor me almost every day, preparing for a quiz and then the next, and the next. I came in to my teacher for lunch and he helped me step by step. I studied for tests, and worked hard. And my work payed off. I got a high A in the course, and a lot of experience from it. It taught me how to work hard for something, to earn a good grade when you deserve it, and it gave me the skills I needed to get As in the high school classes I am taking this

My first failure discouraged me to the point where, I felt like I would never reach an advanced math level again. The lack of self-confidence that resulted from my sub-par math scores soon began to negatively affect some of my other classes. I quickly realized that the trend had to stop. I worked diligently to achieve what, at the time, seemed unattainable. My change in the outlook of my repeated failures helped me to finally succeed. Throughout the course of the last two years, I have grown more self-aware in my study habits. I push myself even harder when I think I have done the best I can.

I arrived at practice with my shoes laced, hair pulled back, and the mindset that I was unstoppable. I could play against every member of my team and come out the victor on any given day. It was the first day of practice that week, and challenge matches were scheduled to begin. The team went through our daily shuffle of drills, conditioning, and running to prepare for what was lying ahead. While warming up with my friends, I felt great, talking about homecoming, boys, and a variety of irrelevant events. I felt ready. The odds were in my favor and nobody could stop me.

Last year, I took AP Calculus BC, and it was one of the most difficult subjects I’ve ever taken. In the past, I never had to work so hard to understand math. I never really had to do homework in my math classes, because math was second nature, and I thought that Calculus would be the same. I was extremely wrong. I was positive I aced that first test, but it was a near fail. I was devastated; sure, I’ve bombed tests before, but never in math, and I considered dropping the class. I kept putting off going to see my counselor, and finally, after a couple more failed tests, my teacher pulled me aside and asked me what was going on. I told him that I wasn’t getting the materials, that I was floundering in all of information, and that I was

Many years have gone by with much contemplation about what I wanted to do when I grew up. Due to my age, that vision has looked like many different professions. I started out with dreams of having an Army career starting at the age of 18, to have that quickly change when my new husband and I found we were expecting our first child. When our commanding officer found out, he spoke to us and explained that both of us could be sent to war at the same time. Rather than deciding which family member to give custody of our child to in that situation, I decided to depart from the Army and start my new journey as “mom”.

Despite arithmetic being one of my weaker subjects, I took honors pre-calculus sophomore year in hopes of improving my math skills. However, I lacked motivation to work hard and my grades weren’t very good. Academic advisors at College Track, the program I joined in 9th grade to help me realize my dream of attending college, pushed me to come in twice a week for tutoring. I annoyed the mentor I was assigned to by going off topic or trying to leave early. As the semester neared its end, I felt a desperation to raise my grade. I realized that I needed to take advantage of my mentor, so I began to ask questions instead of endlessly nodding and pretending to understand the difficult concepts. He taught me to break down complicated questions into

His eyes are made for the road. Two tornado blue irises meet the highway, looking past the smudges on his lightweight frameless glasses. He shifts his hands along the steering wheel, dodging what hurts most. Noting which movements prevent his worn hands from freezing into twisted positions like cream flowing into black coffee. He wheezes a cough. Loses stability. Regroups. Accelerates.

I have always been an above average student, receiving A’s and B’s on my report card. However, sophomore year hit me like a bolt of lightning. I failed two semesters of AP Calculus AB class. In order to bounce back from this fiasco, I retook the class to prove to myself that I could have done better. Through hard work, late nights, and dedication, I was able to pass Calculus the second time. If only I tried harder, I could have passed on the first try.

This assignment brought me closure, the making of “The rose that grew from the concrete” brought me to tears literally. My sons birthday took place on a Saturday, and the drawings and final cuts of the paper were made the night before Friday. I made arrangements before hand, and decorated the basement with a Teen Titans theme on Thursday. I was feeling bitter sweet about my sons birthday since he was turning five. I believe that this year was harder one me, since he had just started school for the first time. As I pressed play on my final product a million things ran through my head.

In San Francisco, about a year after my mother died, when I was nine or ten years old and going to the second new school since moving in with my father, I had a desperate crush on a girl named Lisa. She was a year older than me, in the next grade level up (our classrooms were combined). She was pretty, Asian, was popular with a group of friends that would surround her during recesses.

Two years after we had signed the gas lease my father stopped farming. The cows and the pigs were sold to the Baker’s farm on the other side of Iberdeen. So were his two tractors along with most of the other equipment that had taken up real estate on our land. Now our house sat on almost three hundred acres of dirt, grass, hay, fieldstone, history.

I quickly found out that this test could sway my grade downwards if I got anything below an 85, but if I miraculously performed well enough to get above a 95 I could finally get an A in the class. I distinctly remember thinking about the critical moments in past math classes, I remembered first being disappointed with my performance in 4th grade, up until that point I had always done well in math, but in that grade I first received a 70 on a homework assignment. I began to struggle from that point on and had to focus much more on the subject, despite my efforts I always was disappointed, from my disappointing grade in 8th grade algebra and subsequent moving down to a lower class, to my struggles in the 10th grade class. I finally got myself together in that moment and saw the teacher was passing out the test to the classmate next to me, she then handed me back my test upside down. My teacher always would put a smiley face sticker with a good work note next to it if you got a good grade, this note was written in a vibrant, bright ink that nearly jumped off the page, it was tough to miss even if the test was upside

A recent event where I felt that I failed was on my A.P. Calculus test. I got a B-. While this may not be a horrible grade it was the first grade below a 95% that I had received all term. I had spent all of my summer at a rigorous Summer Academy called Noonan Scholars. There I dedicated my whole summer to learning calculus and taking a college English class. Math had always been an obstacle for me and I was determined to of better. I tried hard to understood all the topics and sought the Professor after hours. Receiving that B- was a drastic blow to my confidence. I responded to this failure by studying more and making sure that my grade never slipped again. In college I imagine myself being faced with difficult classes and I plan on working

I woke up from a loud knock from my front door. I examined the clock and it read 11:00 p.m. " Seriously!? This is the time the deliverer comes?! ". I trudged down stairs weary in my pajamas. I opened the door only to find the kukuri by it's self from the breeder. " And the person left... Wow, welp it's time to get you in.." As I gazed upon my new kukuri I realized I couldn't fit her through the door. Instead, I took her around to the garage and took her inside.. then realizing I still needed to get through the door to my house. Tired and not wanting to deal with this garbage, I broke the entrance to the home a little more so she could fit in. " I can fix this later.. " I said yawning. The kukuri came into my home and went up stairs quickly.

Math was my strong suit. My math teacher, Ms. Shumway, started to write down math problems on the board. She told us they were review problems from the past year. At this moment is when my pride got shot down. My heart sunk. My brain went blank. I looked around at the other students as they frantically wrote down the answers. My palms got sweaty. My legs started shaking. My heart started to beat fast. I had never seen math problems like these in my life. I couldn’t figure out any part of it. The problems were so hard that I didn’t know how to interpret them, but I kept trying to work on them. Ms. Shumway kept a fast pace and I tried to keep up, but I kept failing my tests and homework assignments. I had no idea how to do them, and when I asked for help, I didn’t even understand what the teacher was saying. This went on for a few days.