One meaningful experience I remember as a student is having to take afterschool lessons to help me pass my end of term exams. My purpose for using this experience is to inform other students who may be having problems in school or problems with their schoolwork that it is always possible to make a change. This text will show the reader how I went from being basically the bad kid in school who was failing, to the quiet kid in class who passes.

 I was in middle school at that time, and it was hard for me to stay focused in class because I always found something to distract me from my work. Additionally, I always thought school was unnecessary and not the place for me. I always believed that school was a waste of time because the only purpose I saw in completing school, is to show an employer that you showed up regularly and completed the tasks you were told to do. I believed that it I would be more successful without school by actually learning different ways to make income, rather than learning quadratic equations and history on the pass that has no effect on me or use to me. 

I started feeling the effects from not having any interest in schoolwork and started to fall behind on my work. My grades went down as low as sixty percent. I was also getting into a lot of trouble like fights and conflicts and often ended up in the principal’s office. I remember the day I got into trouble for a big fight that occurred, students recorded what happened and the video got spread around. The next day I returned to school, my principle told me that I would not be graduating if I didn’t get my grades and behavior right. This aggravated me, the fact that one person could make that decision to put my life offtrack was insane to me. This made me want to put in the effort to better my grades so I could graduate middle school.

My teacher heard about what happened and told me about A afterschool class that would help me with homework assignments and would also teach me new things in the process. I told my parents about the classes, and I got enrolled a week later. My only intensions for   taking the class was so that I would graduate middle school on time. I knew that if I applied myself in the class I would be ready enough for the final exam that determined me graduating.

The class was located at a high school which was a  twenty-minute drive from my middle school. The students in the class were all in high school which made them all older than me. I believe that being around older kids made me mature faster because the environment and class settings were way different from a middle school class. There wasn’t as many distractions as I was use to so I had to adjust to being better behaved. Every day, my  dad would pick me up and drop me off  to ensure that I actually went and got their safe. The class had about ten people in total including myself. We started class at three thirty pm and ended at six thirty pm every day. The teacher would teach us based on her syllabus from three thirty to five thirty pm, and then help us with our homework from school with the remaining time. She would sometimes stay after hours with me to help with the more difficult assignments. 

At first it was hard for me adjusting to actually doing my work, I didn’t like the class at first because of how long the class was, especially because I had to go straight from middle school, to another school for three hours. It felt like I was doing two days of school in one. Gradually I became more comfortable with the class and I got use to it. Math became my favorite subject because of this class, I found the problems to be exiting to solve and I started to enjoy solving math problems.  

After some time, I started to get use to the flow of completing my assignments, I was able to focus more since there wasn’t many distractions and I also believe this helped me behavioral wise. I was getting into less conflicts and my grades started to improve. I passed my end of term exam and graduated middle school with no problems. 

One text I related this to is ‘maybe I could save myself by writing’, the writer stated, ‘when I passively accepted everything I was taught as fact, school was easy for me. I just had to memorize a bunch of information’. This related to me because I showed no interest towards school or learning until my back was against the wall and I had no choice but to have interest, and when this happened learning actually became easy for me. I was now able to understand and comprehend most of what was being taught and I got the ability to focus more on the task at hand. School became a smoother process for me and I was having less problems and complications completing exams and assignments. Furthermore, in having interest, I was able to accomplish the goal of graduating and also happened to like some of the things I learned in the process.