Personal Narrative : The Never Ending Force

Are you tired and having trouble paying attention in class? Focusing on tasks at hand? Or just completely being overall unproductive? The average college student is deprived at least two full hours asleep each night according to “College Tidbits” a website designed to promote healthy lifestyles and productivity in daily college life. These results were pooled from multiple surveys done over hundreds of campuses throughout the United States. Today, I hope to persuade you to fight the statistics and get those extra two hours of sleep. Do what it takes to get the full seven to nine hours that is suggested by the Mayo Clinic. I will discuss two problems. Why college students are not

I started my junior year of high school with passing the reading section of the STAAR test as my main goal academically. Of course, grades were the most important but I was really more focused on improving my reading. My English 3 teacher Mr. Frost helped me out a lot throughout this whole process. He would give me sheets of paper full of samples of similar questions that will be in the test and we would discuss them after school was over. The test was on December before the winter break had started. I finished the test with the same question I had when I first entered the testing room. How did I do? I got my results in the first week of the second semester. I passed everything but the reading part again. I looked at Mr. Frost after I looked at the results and I said, “I’m not quitting, I will keep on fighting”. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I know you will”, he said with a smile on his face. Despite the results of the test, I wasn’t feeling like a failure at all. I felt like I gave it my all to that test and I was proud of myself. The results may say that I failed but I felt like a winner. But I was still not satisfied. I knew that the next time I took the test it would be the last I will take

Failure is a part of life. While many see failure as a negative thing, I have started to see it as a situation that can make you a better person. Failure drives me to never make that mistake again. I first realized this when I took my first AP class and AP exam and received a score of 2. This journey all started sophomore year when I took AP World History. I quickly learned that I needed to actually read and take notes to be able to succeed in the class. It took a few poor grades on essays and tests for me to understand this. Despite this new revelation, I still struggled in the class. When it came time to start reviewing and preparing for the exam, I put an immense amount of effort, but not as hard as I should’ve been. Exam day came and

She assured me that I would be fine, that I won’t succeed if I don’t even try. I wonder now if she said that because she didn’t want to sit in the car to wait for me for longer than she had to. Maybe she dismissed the thought of me failing, and she didn’t want to delay my success. The testing center would give me two hours, anyways. I could write a believable essay in two hours, couldn’t I?

Over my years of school, one big influence on me has always been sports. Ever since a young age, I have always enjoyed playing and watching sports. In my four years in high school, I have fell in love with the sport of lacrosse.

After a late night study session I felt confident, but I had to decide between sleeping in or cooking breakfast. My eyelids chose sleep.

I woke up and took one bite out of my pop tart but that one bite was all I could eat. My legs were shaking, and my heart was pounding. My dad told me, “It is a true honor to even make it this far so go out there and have some fun.” Once I heard this statement, I knew I was ready to go. I arrived at school and boarded the bus. The car ride was an hour and fifteen minutes of hearing the squeaking of the wheel on the bus. My teammates were getting their heads ready for the big game.

Our teacher then gave us a reading schedule for the month, when to read about 15 pages on a given day. We would also have one five-question quiz per week on a day following a reading homework day to keep us in check. Normally I’d be nervous for these sort of quizzes, but after my failure on the first test I was motivated to redeem myself. I saw these assessments as practice for the eventual test, a sparring for the big fight. I had to take these readings seriously however, so I decided to take notes during the read.What was supposed to be a 45 minute task turned out to be a 2 to 3 hour burden. I was determined never to skip any scheduled reading as a quiz could occur the next. Sometimes I would stay up late just to finish writing and it wasn’t simple side notes, I wrote down the complete sentence word for word. When I finished a unit, the notes accumulated to a minimum of 9 pages.However, my hard work was not in vain as I aced the quiz, and the quiz after that. Before I knew it I aced the test, and the test after that. I am honestly glad that I failed that first test, otherwise I do not think I would have developed such a work

I walked into the room, confidence a little too high and performed my skills in front of the skills evaluator. Walking out, I thought I passed. I told my teachers, my friends, I even texted my mother,

In the article Teachers,Students and Sleep, author Dave Stuart address the effects of different qualities of sleep have on students. Stuart covers the causes for poor sleep and the consequences this can have. The author repeatedly references the work of Harvard graduate Maria Konnikova, along with Shawn Stevenson who has a bachelor's degree, thus they appear to be reliable sources. Stuart cover the negative effects of artificial light close to sleep, and the many positive effects of regularity in other activities on the sleep cycle. Dave Stuart makes his readers reevaluate how important sleep is.

I get the news... a math test! We are having a math test on something we just learned today. I sit back down at my desk and begin to panic because I cannot let myself fail this AP Statistics test considering we only have one test per quarter. Everything is rushing through my head at one hundred miles an hour. The pressure in my eyes gets harder and harder and then a tear falls down my cheek. I am crying in front of a class full of seniors and I’m the only sophomore; what an embarrassment. After what seemed like years of trying to calm myself down I finally come to realization with myself that freaking out will not help me learn this math by tomorrow; I need to take action now and the next day I took the test and received my grade of a C, this

“You should really go to bed. You look exhausted. It’s not like it has to be finished, you’re not going to get a zero if you’re not done,” my mom told me. She also looked terribly exhausted and in desperate need of sleep.

“Ameen Al-Dalli,16 years old, who will begin his junior year at Langley High School, said he has fallen asleep in class. The high-performing honors student said he has to get up at 5:30 a.m. and be at the bus stop at 6:20 to get to school for the 7:20 start time. Ameen said he aims for a bedtime of 11:30 p.m. but if he has a big test or a paper he might not go to bed until 12:30 or 1 a.m.. At most, he gets seven hours of sleep at night and usually around five or six, he said” (Reddy). This high school student stays up late for his schoolwork and is forced to get up early to get to school on time. On school nights, Ameen Al-Dalli only gets seven hours of sleep at the most. Even though Al-Dalli continues to maintains his grades, the start for

Exigence: Sleep is a humored concept among university students as the pressures of academic assignments, examinations and social life often robs them of precious hours of sleep. As a result of unequal

As the bell rung for the end of first period, I gathered my things and began to walk to my second period class, Biology. Biology was always to me the hardest subject I had ever dealt with because there was so much to learn, study, and truly understand. I walked through the door into the classroom and I’ll never forget the words I heard my teacher say that caught me so off-guard. “Get out your notes and study because you have a test today”, he said. As I heard him finish his sentence, my eyes widen and I quickly moved towards my seat and began to skim over my notes as fast as I could. I had completely forgot that I had a test in biology.