My Goal:

Prior to coming to Stanton, I was a bright girl with a burning desire for learning. I wanted to know everything in the world. Everything. Nothing was going to stop me either. I was brought up in an environment that fostered academic growth and an “A” was nothing but the ordinary.

Stanton was pretty much a dream. It was the Harvard for law majors and the Johns Hopkins for Neurobiology majors, to me. I dreamt about walking through the halls of Stanton, standing at the bus loading area, sitting in the auditorium, and joining every club there. Funny story: when I was in 8th grade my bus broke down, so everyone on the bus had to get off at Stanton. That was my first time on Stanton campus and I was so excited that I was jumping up and down and exclaiming, “OH MY GOD! I’M AT STANTON!!” Unsurprisingly, I got weird stares from the upperclassmen.

The day I got my IB Acceptance letter was one of the happiest days of my 14 year life; I was ecstatic. This acceptance letter pretty much meant I was accepted into the world of academic competition full of people like me. People who understood how devastating a “B” on a report card was. People who understood the importance of studying during lunch, on the bus, during gym, and while walking to class. I thought getting into Stanton would make me a better person. I thought I would walk out of Stanton unscathed by the rumors (which proved to be true) of all-nighters, failing grades, and no life.

I was wrong.

The past two years of Stanton were not easy. Not hard. But definitely not easy. My freshman year was so similar to my 8th grade year at Darnell Cookman, that it seemed like a breeze. My only problem? AP World History. But I passed through it, no problems.

My sophomore year was harder. I was never “bad” at a subject before. Like, yeah, I had subjects that I was better at than others. But “bad”? Nope. And there I was plunged into two subjects: one that I was bad at, and a subject that I realized I was bad at- Physics and English, respectively. All of a sudden I was taking a course for a whole year that I whole-heartedly sucked at, no matter how much I tried. But I made it, guys. I made it.

Junior year just started. Or at least it seems like it. But I’m dying. It’s easy enough: do your homework, study, take the tests. But I’m dying. Just like most kids in their junior year at Stanton, I barely get 4 hours of sleep, 5 on a good day. It’s physically impossible for me to stay up in class. I pinch myself awake, and eventually my body doesn’t even care about the pain that I am putting myself through as my eyes close. I began eating in class. I never eat in class, but there is nothing else that can keep me awake. I’m sleeping in class. I never sleep in class, but I can not stay awake. How am I supposed to learn, if I am never awake to listen? I don’t know if I can make it guys.

The bright-eyed girl that walked into the doors of Stanton on August 2013 at 7:57 A.M. is gone. She is now replaced with a girl with dull eyes, fighting to survive each obstacle that comes her way. She’s dead inside. There is no more will to learn anymore, grades replacing any intrinsic desire.

Why? What is the point of putting students through so much trouble? They are supposed to WANT to learn. They should WANT to come to school. But, that isn’t what’s happening. The sad thing of this whole thing is, Stanton isn’t the only one. In fact, there are schools throughout the nation where students are struggling to keep up their grades.

So, my goal? I want to fix this. I want to make it so students WANT to come to school and learn. Education should be education, not a business based on money and competition. It’s funny isn’t it, how education has become extrinsically motivated and yet they, whoever “they” are, expect students to be intrinsically motivated?

It is.