Julian Torrecampo

9/17/14

ENG 1101 – D332

Close to Failure

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “ By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Many people face this problem in their lives. I faced this problem in my senior year of high school when I decided to take the class Pre-Calculus. I did not put enough effort into my work and I almost ended up failing. In order to do the best you can in difficult classes or in school in general, you must consider the influences of teachers, studying and classwork.

One of the main influences in my class was my teacher. There was no doubt that she knew what she was doing and that she was really good at what she did. But I do not think that she was very good at explaining everything that we needed to know. She would go really fast and go through each question at lightning speed. By the way she taught, you would get an idea of how to solve the problem but you won’t fully understand how to solve it. If a student would ask her to go over a certain thing again, she would kind of do the same thing the first time but a little bit slower. Still not fully explaining the process. I think that this is one of the reasons why I almost failed the class.

A difficulty that I faced in this class was studying. I did not always study, but when I did, I put in little effort. I usually studied the day before which wasn’t very smart. I would try to study my notes and see how my teacher solved the problems but I still wouldn’t fully understand how some of them were done. Other times I would use the textbook, but it would still confuse me. Even going to my teacher for help wasn’t working, and I wasn’t the only one having that problem. She usually just solved the problem for you and would not fully explain how she got that final answer. I then would usually resort to asking my friends for help, which helped a little bit.

The final influence on my effort to pass this class was my classwork and homework. She would assign homework everyday, which I would do. But most of them I wouldn’t do on my own. I would usually ask a friend to do it with me before class or I would try to look up the answers. Doing the homework with a friend kind of helped me understand what we were doing in class a little better, but surely looking up the answers didn’t help. In class, I copied everything that my teacher wrote on the board and payed attention all the time. But I usually wouldn’t ask her any questions if I was confused about something. When it came to the tests, I wouldn’t understand some of the questions, which can tie into the way my teacher explained it during class or just not studying that section enough. I failed a lot of my tests, but she usually gave us a retake of the test if we did, which I did better on.

By the middle of the year, I had a failing grade which was any grade under 70. By the end of the year, I did a little bit of extra work and worked harder in order to get my grade up back to a passing grade. In choosing to take this class, I had to consider the influences of my teacher, studying and classwork. There were many things I could have done differently in order to have done good in this class. I could have tried harder to find a way to cope with these influences and to have used them to help me do good in the class. I could have spent more time studying and asking my teacher for help when I didn’t understand something. I failed to prepare myself for this challenging class which cause me to be close to failing. Different things contributed to my failure, but not as much as the lack of effort that I put into doing my best in the class. If I didn’t slack off, I maybe could have gotten a much better grade. Many people fail to prepare for things that they want to complete or achieve. In order to get what you really want, you must work hard and be capable of overcoming the obstacles that you face.