School, my biggest struggle

Today, I went for a personal best on a lift in the gym and failed. I had been building up to this for many months and was confident I had it in the bag. I got the barbell about three inches from lockout before ultimately failing the lift. It was frustrating, but it got me thinking about failures in my life. I’ve failed a countless number of lift attempts over the year. In fact, I’ve failed a myriad of times at a plethora of things in my life, but none more so than in school, or so it seems. School has been a lifelong struggle for me.

I’m not good at school. Between apathy, a quiet disposition, poor memory,  and the attention span of a goldfish, my makeup isn’t particularly conducive to academic success. I’ve incurred nearly as many defeats as victories during my years in school and never achieved high marks during middle and high school. At one point, I wouldn’t entertain the thought of going to college because I concluded that school wasn't for me. To say I’ve struggled to hit my stride in school is an understatement.

One of the most trying and embarrassing failures in my life happened during Junior year in high school. As I previously mentioned, I have never excelled in school, but I was an especially lousy student that year. I grew careless and ended up receiving an appalling grade point average of 0.00 on a report card that year—and that’s not a typo. I received straight Fs on a report card during my Junior year. It was one of the lowest points of my life.

That report card had few ramifications on my life. For starters, the principal threatened to send me to a continuation school for my Senior year. I dreaded going to continuation school because there’s a stigma attached to it, and in my eyes, receiving a diploma from there would be tainted. But even worse than the threat of continuation school was my parents’ reaction. My parents are both first-generation immigrants and made great sacrifices to give me a chance to live a better life than they did. My failure in school ate at me inside because I indirectly failed them. The emotions I felt during that time still resonate with me today.

That experience proved to be a seminal moment in my academic journey. It lit a fire under me. I’m not a quitter. I could live with not being a naturally gifted student, but I refused to fail due to lack of effort. I won’t embellish my story and pretend that was precisely the turning point when things changed for me, and everything was sunshine and lollipops after that. I still struggled to apply myself in college after high school and even put college off to the side in favor of work for a few years. But that report card still haunts me to this day.

Fortunately, my arduous academic journey forecasts to end on a positive note. Two years ago, I graduated magna cum laude from Skyline College with an Associate's degree in Communication, and in December of this year, I’ll finish my final course at San Francisco State University as a BECA Major, with expected honors to boot. Graduating college will be the biggest accomplishment of my life because school has been the biggest struggle of my life, and quite frankly, I can’t wait for it to be over.