Category: Unit 1

I was running late for my English class. Because of the low amount of sleep I got the night before, I was rushing through the city tech halls like a slug. I came into English class waiting for someone to start something with me, I was unbearably grumpy. The blinding ceiling lights prevented me from falling asleep, so I quickly lost hope in that opportunity. Since my eyes were practically being forced open, I thought I might as well pay attention to whatever we were talking about. We were discussing the article the class had to read for homework, the same one I slaved away for until 2 am. While my classmates were answering the questions professor Scanlan asked, I couldn’t believe the professor was accepting the answers they were providing. Internally, I was calling their answers idiotic, and I genuinely felt like they shouldn’t have had a take on the discussion. I thought my professor secretly agreed with me until he AGREED with somebody else’s point. I was panicking, I thought my pov on the article was the only right answer to it, no matter, it was only one other point of view, there’s no way there another perspective can be found, mine is still the better point. My confidence was shattering once professor Scanlan validated someone ELSE’S perspective. My world was coming to an end, and I started questioning my entire thought process, but while he was explaining his joy in hearing other perspectives on things, he said “one thing I love about perspectives, is that nobody’s perspective can ever be truly wrong”. I was wondering to myself whether that’s truly possible or not, but then surprisingly, I came to a realization, that I can be wrong too.

Professor Scanlan and the rest of the class were discussing the Billy Rahmani article we had to read for homework last night. Since I decided to have the work ethic of an average college student, I was up until 2 am reading that article, resulting in my bad attitude during class, my drowsiness was to blame. Trying to sleep was a lost cause due to the lighting of my class, curse those damn ceiling lights. With no other options present, I decided to listen to the group discussion, and I quickly regretted making that decision. Based on a few girls’ answers, I thought that I was the only person that had valid points to make, but I was QUICKLY mistaken once my professor ended up validating and agreeing with their points. I was questioning myself frantically, but once the professor said “one thing I love about perspectives, is that nobody’s perspective can ever be truly wrong”, I realized I relate to Billy Rahmani a lot more than I thought because we both realized in an instant that there’s such thing as other perspectives, and being wrong.

On my chair, behind my desk in a classroom dedicated to the dreadful studies of AP Statistics during another day of my junior year of high school, I was beginning to ponder so many things.  The first of those things was if I was going to make it to lunch since this class was always the one before us students when to the lunchroom and I was always being driven mad with hunger during that hour and a half that I always sat there waiting.  The second, was when it was all going to be over for good.  I was a boy of many mistakes, and this particular one was probably the most terrible blunder of them all.  I had signed up for AP Statistics and a few other advanced placement courses the during the end of the sophomore year, thinking I could handle the workload and more advanced material to learn, but I was wrong.  So dreadfully wrong in fact, that I would be spending the entirety of my junior year of high school in so much pain from this error, that it  completely changed everything I felt about my education and what I was supposed to be doing with my future.

I has grown up with very high expectations of myself, believing I would one day become someone great and knowledgable.  My pride growing up as a kid came from getting good grades and making my parents proud of me, but I hated school, and the process of getting those good grades was not good to put it bluntly.  I was a massive procrastinator, constantly putting my homework off until the last minute, which I still got done, but made me always work until late into the night.  I was also a terribly introverted and anxiety ridden mess of a kid, things as simple as homework and projects just made me sweat because I was a perfectionist who wanted to get everything right and would not stop working until it was.  Things had been this way for as long as I could remember, but it wasn’t until junior year of high school that I truly reached the limits of what I could handle; and when that happened, everything just collapsed.