My Struggle. by Kaiya

My Struggle. by Kaiya - December 2024 Scholarship Essay

A challenging academic experience I have faced was during the covid 19 pandemic. This was a very difficult time for my family, as my mom was a nurse working on the covid unit; and she lived in a camper in the driveway in order to protect us. Additionally, my dad was an essential worker working swing shifts. As a result of this, I was left to care for my ten and six year old brothers when I was only twelve years old. Because of this, my academics suffered greatly. I struggled to complete my school work and did not learn anything during this time. Then once we were able to go back to school the next year I was taking Algebra One, which is a high school course, as an eighth grader. However, during this year the school mandated that I be quarantined at home for two whole weeks due to possible covid exposure. Due to this, I missed several very important topics in my algebra one class. I struggled immensely with the class for the rest of the school year, as we needed to use what I missed for everything else we did that year. It did not help that math had always been a struggle for me, and even the kids who always did extremely well in math were confused.

To make it through algebra one I had to work incredibly hard. I studied for hours and would watch videos to help me understand what I was supposed to be learning. I would also use an app that would show me how to do some of the math problems to better understand the steps I needed to take to solve them. By working hard and studying I managed to get trough the class with a passing grade.