jumping over hurdles in the classroom by gabriela

jumping over hurdles in the classroom by gabriela - April 2019 Scholarship Essay

While in high school I've encountered many challenging situations. Probably more than I can count. Unfortunately, that will happen to everybody, whether the challenges are big or small you will have them. The big question is how are you going to overcome the challenges? Out of all of my academic challenges there has been one that I will always remember. Overcoming the situation was difficult but I'm so thankful I had to experience and go through it.
My freshman and sophomore years I attended Ridgewood high school. I became comfortable with the school, and my teachers teaching styles. I maintained good grades and I was also comfortable enough with my teachers to ask questions if I was confused about something. I am very shy so being comfortable enough to ask questions in front of the class is kind of a big deal for me. I loved that school! Then one day I heard the news... Ridgewood was closing down.. for good. Hearing this I was so worried about what I was going to do. Where I was going to go. If I was going to connect with the teachers and their teaching styles. The school was projected to close at the end of my junior year, the summer going into my senior year. Then I got more news that I now had to move houses, so I ended up moving into a new school zone before Ridgewood was even going to close.
Winter break ended and I started at Gulf High School. I was extremely nervous not knowing anybody, not knowing if I was going to be put in the same classes that I was enrolled in at Ridgewood. I get my schedule and find out I do have the same classes. My first class was ap psych. My teacher at Ridgewood was amazing! I understood everything he was teaching me, he even did hands on lessons to help us get a better understanding. When I came to gulf my new ap psych teacher has a very different teaching style. He didn't do hands on learning, we did a lot of book work. I was not used to that. Most of my other classes I was okay in, the teachers taught mostly the same, and I could understand what was going on. Then came math. Math I knew I was going to struggle with, I mean who doesn't struggle at least a little bit with math? This teacher though, he had a much different teaching style then I had ever seen in my life. Day by day I kept trying to wait it out, see if maybe I would start to understand as time went on, but it would just get worse. I knew I had to do something about it.
Ap psych and math were now two classes I was worried about. Was I going to fail because the teachers teach differently? I knew I had to do something, I couldn't let this keep me down from everything ive worked so hard for. For ap psych after awhile I began to realize that I learned much better hands on and the only way to continue that was to take it upon myself to learnt that way since that wasn't the way my teacher taught. Which is okay everybody is different. I started to take the books home with me, read the chapter/lesson and create my own hands-on activity to help me reach a better understanding of what I am learning. That was a tremendous help. For math, I wasn't sure what to do. My teacher was not the best helper and neither were my classmates. I took the book home and studied and studied trying to read and do every example in the book. Nothing was working. I was stuck. I had to figure out something because this math class was leaving be behind. Then I began to take each math problem separately, piece by piece. I asked friends who had taken the class previously for help, finding anybody I could to give me some tricks and tips. That was the best decision I made, it helped me so much.
You will reach academic challenges, you just have to do whatever you can to push past them and overcome them. Ask friends for help, and do things that you're used to, that you knew helped you previously. It will make a big impact on your academic career and you will succeed in everything you do!