Persevere Through Struggle
My moment of literacy certainly came from the time spent in my American Dream Honors course during my Sophomore year of high school. For most, if not every class, not just humanities, there are classes that are called; PSP and then there are honors, AP, and IB courses as well. For my American Dream class there were two choices, PSP or Honors. I had been placed in the honors version per my request, despite the fact that my teachers from the prior year had suggested otherwise. I chose to stay, since I wished to show I could handle the advanced course, and to prove the people who didn’t think I belonged wrong.
The entire bases of the course, was founded upon the idea of integrating history with literature, creating both a unique and conducive environment for my classmates and I to work within. Being a humanities based course, it was to be heavily based on American history and literature, two things I was certainly confident in my abilities in. The history portion was particularly attractive to me. I’ve always had a knack for doing well in historically based courses and subjects. I’d thought up to that point, that I was in myself an above average writer, of course being placed on a comparative plane of someone else my age. This course would ultimately prove me dead wrong.
The classroom was located in the main humanities room, number 137, just a quick right from the main entrance of the building. These humanities rooms were designed more or less, as two separate classrooms with a collapsible center wall that can be combined to form one larger room. When not in use by humanities, they were often split for other subjects. The intention of these rooms was to accommodate classes the size of 35–50 students. At that age, not having yet experienced a larger college seminar style of lecture, it was a very large class for a high school student, The room was set up, based of a fairly generic room guide, rows of tables, typically three deep with two chairs per table. I was sat in the middle row, in the end seat of the far left table. This meant I was as centered in the room as can be. This didn’t bother me, but I knew it meant I’d be in the general line of sight of my teachers.
Since the humanities classes were so large, and had so much information to cover over the course of the year, they were often covered by two teachers. I won’t get into their actual names, but one has a background in English and Literature, while the other possesses a greater knowledge of history. They would teach these topics respectively, generally alternating daily. One of my teachers was actually in his first year as a hired tutor, they had been on training in my humanities course the year prior, so I already had an established and quite positive relationship with them. The other teacher, is what you may call, a grizzled vet, they had been in the school since it was initially built, I’d say around 12 years prior to my taking of the course, I was quickly introduced to a much different reality than what I had initially expected when we were assigned our first paper of the year. The quality of work that was expected of us, was much more complex and greater than what I had had in years past. We were routinely assigned extended books, the first being the bane of my existence at the time. It was titled, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a book written in old English. I had an excruciatingly difficult time reading that text, as I simply couldn’t comprehend what it was telling me. Our paper was to analyze a certain element of the book, I was assigned the analyzation of the journey followed by the protagonist.
I really had the absolute minimum understanding of the material, that I’d say is possible without completely neglecting the texts. I was very unconfident during the entire writing process for this paper, ultimately becoming the rude awakening aforementioned.
Being that I had an exceptionally difficult time reading the book itself, it came no shock to me, that when I had received my essay back, a large ‘F’ sat ominously on the top of the paper. I had no concept of what a proper paper truly looked like, and certainly had no idea on where to go. Fortunately I thought there was only one way to go from that beginning, up. As the year progressed, I happened to excel in the history portion of the class, but continued to struggle heavily in the English and literature section. Whether it was a google presentation or another paper, I simply couldn’t find my way to a better grade. Flunking papers and confusion were a constant, that I had grown to expect from that class. There was nothing for me to do at the time, I felt truly defeated, and was looking for somewhere to place my displeasure. I had reached a point, where I was one bad paper away from dropping down into the lower section.
I ultimately had decided to stick with the course I had enrolled in, not wanting to prove people right. Fueled by a raw determination to not let myself fail, I started seeing my English teacher outside of class to help myself better my writing skills. Soon after I started this practice, my papers and projects for the English section of class, had slowly began to improve. I creeped out from the F range and slowly into the low C range. Obviously this wasn’t enough. As the year continued to progress, I also did, slowly but surely.
Eventually the final paper had come around the bend, and I now felt confident enough that I could succeed to a limit beyond what I had been achieving. I had worked exceptionally hard on the assigned paper, which was a large connecting essay, summarizing and linking everything we had covered over the course of the entire year. I ultimately received an ‘A’ on that final paper, accomplishing the goal I had set for myself, some months prior.
I can think of no better way, than to describe the lesson that I learned. I found out, on the long and hard road, that you can’t quit, even if the odds seem unanimously stacked against you. Whatever writing ability I may or may not possess now, I can attribute entirely to that course and the struggles I had to persevere through over the course of the year.
