A New Man

A 17-year-old boy in a room full of adults in pursuit of their education, trying to draw out his full potential in life. This hill that I have to climb is nothing short of challenging but I know that I’m up for it and will do my best. High school was such a roller coaster of challenges, it shaped me into who I am now and the many different ways I achieve academic success in terms of literature and literacy.

In 9th grade, I was shy with very poor social skills afraid of what high school was going to be like. Everyone was taller than me and it was a completely new environment I was about to embark upon. Luckily, that was the honeymoon era of high school academics wise and I was yet to know what was to come. I finished 9th grade with high grades but my literature and writing grades were in the 70s. It was something I really struggled with, and didn’t seem like I was improving at all. 10th grade was also a very similar experience for me. Literature was the one subject I didn’t enjoy because it was a major challenge. I was always the slowest reader in the room and sometimes when I would read, I wouldn’t be able to process what I just read. It would feel like I’ve just been saying random words the whole time. I’ve always leaned towards the math side of things more than I did with literature and writing. Math was basically second nature to me compared to everything else. If I ever get less than a 90% on a test, I would consider that a failure. Such standards were not as prevalent when it came to literature. I’ve always expected myself to do poorly in literature and I lacked any real eagerness to do better in it anyways. Therefore, I would always get bad grades due to that, but it wasn’t because I wasn’t trying. It was something I hated doing and never enjoyed but all this changed during 11th grade. In this grade I changed as a writer and began to understand literature and literacy much more than I have in the past.

11th grade was an interesting year for me due to the pandemic, I always found myself behind a computer screen, the whole time hoping and praying my internet was working that day. It was a time of much uncertainty and not knowing if I would see my classmates physically again. During this time, I can say the impact of the circumstances was tremendous for me academically. I had a class called “Race Studies,” which was an integrated class that gave me both an ELA and US HISTORY credit, so I had two teachers. Both of these teachers are known for giving a massive amount of work. Going into this class I didn’t know what to expect. When I was given assignments I would be slightly confused because of how little time we would have to do such big assignments. I would usually feel kind of annoyed because who wants to spend their weekend doing that much homework, but I’m usually not the type of person to complain when a lot of work is given to me. I remember how I would be on my computer for 6-7 hours typing away every Saturday. Through this experience, I learned many techniques and discovered new ways to get what I want to say on paper, all while strengthening the fundamentals of writing at the same time. I started analyzing information better than I did before, allowing my reading to get better and better. I showed massive improvement from previous years and the expectations I held for myself started to increase after this class. The teacher’s feedback was also very effective in knowing what to improve on. All my grades went up in my future classes and in 12th grade; I didn’t have a single class under 90% which was a major confidence booster for me.  Even though literature and literacy are something I look forward to doing,  I started to appreciate it much more than I did in the past. So looking back on it, I’m grateful for the amount of work I put into this class and it forever influenced my future writing. 

Additionally, I think this class influenced the way I see the world as a whole and how I analyze things like race in this world. There is a lot of history when it comes to someone’s culture and ethnicity as it made me more aware of what I should and shouldn’t do. Participating in in-class discussions improved tremendously for me and it helped me speak up more which was something I was scared to do. Before I was scared because I thought I would just be stating the obvious or sound dumb but my perspective changed which helped me a lot. Both of my teachers played a big factor in who I am today so whenever I get asked “What is one thing that changed you as who you are as a person?” I would definitely pick this one when it comes to academics.

Now I’m in college still not knowing what to expect. But I’m no longer a 9th grader with little social skills struggling when it comes to literature and literacy. That is all in the past. Now I am a man who is ready to take on any challenge thrown at me with a massive amount of confidence that cannot be persuaded.