On AP Calculus

This year I took AP Calculus, and it was by far the most I have ever struggled in a class. Maybe I don’t always score perfectly on every exam, but my work ethic and perseverance have always allowed me to achieve excellence in school, regardless of the subject. However, when it came to AP Calculus this year, it was a whole other story. I knew the class was going to be difficult, but I had faith that the harder I worked, the better my grades would get. It came as a shock to me when no matter how hard I worked, I just could not seem to improve. I studied harder than anyone else, could easily explain the material to a student completely unfamiliar with calculus, and genuinely just enjoyed learning the new topics, but for the life of me, I could not seem to score anywhere near as well as I normally do compared to all my other classes. On one test that I was so certain I was going to do well on because I had never felt so confident about a Calculus topic, I managed to get an 80. The only 80 I received the entire year, and my highest grade at that. And to my surprise, I was happy. I was so proud of my 80. This class taught me that sometimes you need to alter your standards. It also taught me that the definition of “success” will be different depending on the area of study. Although an 80 is 20 points lower than a grade I would normally settle for, I was proud of how far I had come. The failing grades never stopped me from trying to get perfect ones. Sometimes, you will never get the 100, no matter how hard you try; and in AP Calculus, I never did. But at the end of the day, I did not deserve the 100 because I was not perfect. Yes, I certainly tried the hardest, but that just was not good enough. I am not a perfect student, and never will be no matter how hard I work. Hard work can only go so far, and even though it makes me so incredibly frustrated, I am learning that it is okay to “fail” in some definition, and “succeed” in another, and those definitions are completely relative to the person and class. I grew tremendously as both a person and a student due to this class, and will always be proud of myself because of that.