Personal Narrative: College Algebra Class

I truly find joy in doing multiple math problems one after another using strict formulas, because once I know how it’s done, I’ll never forget it. I, unfortunately, did not get that opportunity as well as I should have during these last two years of school. My grades first started to dwindle down slowly when I got diagnosed with pneumonia and I missed a lot of days and class time instruction. What made everything even worse was when my mother underwent spine surgery and tragically faced life threatening complications, she was helpless. i was the only one to be there to take care of her and drive her to her doctors appointments, do the grocery shopping, cleaning, and working for myself all together. One thing on top of the other, made getting caught up in class seem impossible, I would get further behind before I was even au fait with my missing assignments. Thankfully, I had very accommodating teachers and faculty members who were more than willing to work with me to help see me succeed. The one person I owe the greatest homage and endless gratitude towards is for my administrator Trey Sirman. He helped me the most to get me to a point where I could finally be prolific in my

assignments. There was a brief moment when I felt like giving up and dropping the class, but then I remembered an old

I failed AP English. I had missed the second quarter of the school year, almost completely, due to… technical difficulties. I got discharged from the hospital mid-February, and for the remainder of junior year, the majority of my waking thoughts revolved around passing 11th grade. With motivational speeches coming at me from my parents, friends, and teachers, I began to believe I had a chance of passing the year. I did my best, which apparently was not enough. My teacher had picked up on my tremendous amount of effort, and on the last day of school, bumped my grade up to a low D — just enough to pass. I was not exactly about to put my grade on display or anything, but I passed! Technically. This is not one of the underdog-who-succeeded stories. The real success for me was (look away, it’s cliché) realizing my best was enough. I sound disgusting.

The fall semester course had gone smoothly. I had a very good teacher, and despite the fact that it was his first time teaching the course, he did a very nice job of preparing us for the exam. Of course I didn't know this at the time prior to the exam, as I was overly anxious that he had perhaps neglected to teach us a certain chapter or section, and I would bomb the exam as a result. These fears turned out to be totally unfounded of course. But my mind seemed to be concocting every possible scenario in which I would perform poorly on the exam for whatever possible reason.

I’m good at finding what's wrong with sentences, but I don't want to read a five page story for 4 questions. I got my results the other day, and I barely hit the proficient line. It was way better than my freshman years. Actually all my finals were proficients, because I studyed harecore for them. I only did it because if I didn't have all C’s and above last semester, I couldn't be in Touch of Class. This is my first year in Touch of Class and so far it’s amazing. We are going to carnegie hall in March, so it was a good thing I got my grades up. They were supposed to go to Florida last year and I hadn’t tried out that year, and that sucked. But the trip got canceled, so we planned on going New

Furthermore, I realized that this semester was going to be particularly challenging because of the Pre-calculus and Calculus hybrid course I had enrolled in; math has not always been my best subject and taking a fast-tracked math course was sure to be disastrous. Nevertheless, I was determined to make A’s in all my classes. After the first week of classes, I could already feel myself becoming overwhelmed with the amount of work I had to do in such a short amount of time. Not to mention, how disappointed I felt in myself when I received my first quiz grade for my pre-calculus class, I had bombed the quiz terribly by making a 65.

However, when I got mine back it was a flat out zero, and after class he pulled me aside. In short, Mr. Grove told me that I basically need to get almost all the points remaining in the school year just to pass the class. If I would fail, I would not be able to graduate considering four English credits are mandatory. At that moment I experienced a moment of shock I have never quite experienced before. I had an immediate sense of stupidity. I questioned it. For lack of a better term, I felt like a complete moron. I was so down on myself and all night I thought about what I got myself into. How I was going to get out of this was beyond me and I was lost and hopeless about what to do. I continued to be sad and depressed for a while. My life went from fun to complete misery.

Before the summer, we had been given the option to take a regular or advanced math class. The first day of school in this advanced math class, we had been given a pretest to assess our prior knowledge of material we should have learned the year before. Although we knew most of the material, I, as well as the other students who had been my class the year before, had been baffled by some of the things were were supposed to have been taught. Nearly all the knowledge we had was what we had learned through RenMath. My new teacher, exasperated, asked how on Earth we all made it into the advanced math class. One student, a friend of mine, pointed to me and said, “She taught us.” I’ll never forget how in that moment, I realized I had been a leader to my classmates, helping them to succeed and achieve more than they would have

During my second semester at Southwest Mississippi Community College, I had finally gotten comfortable at the school: I had made friends, and I was doing well in all of my classes. Well, all except for college algebra. I have never been good at algebra; this class was no exception. I tried my very best to understand the material, but my mind just could not comprehend much of the material that we covered in class. Because of my own inability to understand the material, I never finished any of my homework, and I did not do well on any of the tests that I had taken. I had later come to realize that my inability to understand the material was not the fault of anyone but myself.

For my first hour, I took an honors course in biology and my teacher, Mrs. Caldwell taught with an iron fist and she would not allow for any excuses. During Freshman year, my high confidence prompted me to push her aside. This was pivotal sd she constantly pushed me to work as hard as possible, nag about my mistakes as much as she could, remind me of my terrible grade in her class on a near daily basis, and call on me to answer as much as possible. As a result of my experience in her course, I felt depressed, my ego was crushed, and my grades started to flounder to a 2.7 gpa during my first semester of school. Still, failure leads to success and I developed the blueprints for success.

1. No matter how hard we try to prepare ourselves for challenging experiences and try to stay positive, it becomes harder to do than planned when the time comes. It was the end of the last semester and I was on the verge of emotional depression that totally overwhelmed me. During the exam period, I wasted my weekends on the Internet, chatting and Facebook-ing. I needed to submit an important paper on Tuesday morning. On Sunday night, after wasting so much time of mine and having a little red eyes because of so much exposure to electronic screens, I sat down to write my paper. Only then did I realize that the paper was due the next morning, not on Tuesday. I was extremely nervous because it was too little a time to finish it. Moreover, I was so angry with myself that I wanted to cry. It was a realization that I was off course in my study habits and that I had not overcome my habit of willingly putting myself in difficult positions. The more I thought about being in that mess, the angrier I got with myself. I got even angrier thinking about how it was not the first time in my life that I put myself in such a situation. I could not concentrate on my paper because of that emotional response. Then suddenly I thought that I just needed to talk to someone and calm down. I called my classmate and just told her about everything. She said that the instructor had actually extended the deadline until Thursday. It was such a relief. I thanked her profusely and decided

English was always my best High School subject; Math and Science were always my worst I took three years of Special ED Math and Science.The High School I attended didn't offer multiple Special Ed math classes options. My schedule never featured a Lab Science or an Algbra class. I completed the minimum three year Math and Science requirement on time. It was a tedious task. I was excited to pursue a writing degree. This decision was based on my early childhood writing dream. I knew that I wanted to become a writer when I was 4 or 5.

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.

Eighth grade year came along, and I was officially registered for Algebra I. We received our books, and were officially introduced to our Algebra I teacher. Towards the end of the first nine weeks, however, our class received bad news,

Hi Mr. Clark, I think that I have signed up in the wrong math class. On my schedule it's says intermediate algebra, I signed up for the 65, but that class is super easy. I thought maybe I was suppose to be in the 85 instead now after working on it. If so please let me know how or if I can change it.