Douglass and Resilience – Nick Dufont

Part A:

“As 
I 
writhed
 under
 it,
 I
 would 
at 
times 
feel
that 
learning 
to
 read 
had 
been 
a 
curse
rather
 than 
a
 blessing. 
It 
had
 given 
me 
a
view 
of 
my 
wretched 
condition, 
without
the
 remedy. 
It 
opened 
my
 eyes
 to
 the
 horrible
 pit,
 but
 to
 no
 ladder
 upon
 which
 to
 get
 out.
 In
 moments
 of
 agony,
 I
 envied
 my
 fellow‐slaves
 for
 their
 stupidity.” – ( p . 6)

In passage Frederick Douglass talks about the fact that he wishes that he never learned to read after spending a whole portion of his life trying to. After learning to read, he learned of his existence as a slave and what that means in the society he lived in. He learned of how slave owners all over treat his people and how there was not much of a way to fight against their treatment. He also learned of how the first slave owners left their home and stole Africans from their home to bring them to an unknown land to be treated like animals. While learning about slavery empowered him, Fredrick Douglass was physically and emotionally burdened by the institution of slavery and was left unsure on how to right what he considered wrong.

Throughout my academic career I have had quite a few struggles, most recently in my first semester here at city tech. Math had never been one of my favorite subjects, but has always been a requirement so I always just struggled through and usually make it out the other side. However in my first semester almost every class I was taking was math related, due to my major, but I thought I could get away doing what I always had. So i went through the semester trying what I thought was my best, but this was a way of learning I wasn’t used to. Not having a teacher let you know what you should copy down, having classes start immediately when the professor walks in, and having classes get into the material by the second meet. It all became too much and I wasn’t able to pass all my classes and had to retake a few of them.

Part B:

At the end of the first semester, I had a talk with my advisor and with my brother who had finished college not too long ago and asked them how I could do better the second time around. My advisor let me know that I needed to have a more concrete plan to be able to get through the semester passing all of the classes I need to do that I don’t succumb to the pressure again. My brother let me know that just going through the motions and struggling through like I did in high school isn’t going to work the same in college, he let me know that even if it is difficult I’m actually going to have to put In my full effort. Taking both their inputs into account, and using my own personal experience of that first semester I was able to going in to the second semester with a more solid plan and a better mindset.