Obstacles And Challenges
It's indisputable that the “numbers” aspect of my application isn’t the strongest. Obstacles and challenges often seemed to get the best of me during high school. But still, I have emerged confident and optimistic.
By ninth grade, life had hit me too hard. I was still drunk on anger from my mother’s schizophrenia diagnosis, her disappearance from my family and my parents’ divorce. Years of art therapy had helped me recover from these traumas and in 10th grade, I was on a stronger path: I knew what I wanted and needed to do.
But in 11th-grade things broke apart again. Bureaucratic mistakes in my large high school placed me in high-level classes that I was not prepared for, like AP Physics and Honors Pre-Calculus -- I still hadn’t completed geometry. I panicked at first but I determined that I could take on the …show more content…
Although I often thought I was the only one struggling, I suggested to classmates that we form a study group. Everyone benefited, but I still needed more help and felt embarrassed by my obvious questions. I spent late evenings in the Math Center and library. Although I managed to complete all my classwork, I always froze up on the tests. I felt like I was swimming in work and drowning in numbers. My 504 accommodations helped, but only so much, and I often felt singled out and embarrassed by them.
While I struggled with the academics, my ADD medicine opened up a different problem for me. I needed it more because of the heavy workload, but the side effects (mixed with the stress) caused me to shut down and my work in all my classes began to suffer. Eventually, just going to class scared me and the panic attacks began. When I was finally discovered by my father, in the bathroom, crouched down and breathing heavily, a meeting was arranged with the counselors. They poked at me with their pens and notepads, trying to find the problem -- as if I hadn’t been screaming it all
By ninth grade, life had hit me too hard. I was still drunk on anger from my mother’s schizophrenia diagnosis, her disappearance from my family and my parents’ divorce. Years of art therapy had helped me recover from these traumas and in 10th grade, I was on a stronger path: I knew what I wanted and needed to do.
But in 11th-grade things broke apart again. Bureaucratic mistakes in my large high school placed me in high-level classes that I was not prepared for, like AP Physics and Honors Pre-Calculus -- I still hadn’t completed geometry. I panicked at first but I determined that I could take on the …show more content…
Although I often thought I was the only one struggling, I suggested to classmates that we form a study group. Everyone benefited, but I still needed more help and felt embarrassed by my obvious questions. I spent late evenings in the Math Center and library. Although I managed to complete all my classwork, I always froze up on the tests. I felt like I was swimming in work and drowning in numbers. My 504 accommodations helped, but only so much, and I often felt singled out and embarrassed by them.
While I struggled with the academics, my ADD medicine opened up a different problem for me. I needed it more because of the heavy workload, but the side effects (mixed with the stress) caused me to shut down and my work in all my classes began to suffer. Eventually, just going to class scared me and the panic attacks began. When I was finally discovered by my father, in the bathroom, crouched down and breathing heavily, a meeting was arranged with the counselors. They poked at me with their pens and notepads, trying to find the problem -- as if I hadn’t been screaming it all