The Turning Point by Alice

The Turning Point by Alice - March 2014 Scholarship Essay

Most conversations with strangers progress in a manner similar to the following:
“What grade are you in?”
“Actually, I graduated from college already and I’m preparing for graduate school.”
“Oops, I thought you were still in high school! You look young! How old are you?"
“I’m twenty now, but I graduated when I was eighteen.”
“Oh, eighteen. Wait, what? Don’t most people start college then?”
“Yeah…” I sheepishly reply.

Even without these discussions, I still believe my greatest academic achievement was completing my Bachelor of Arts in Music, when most people enter the university for the freshman year. I began my college degree around the age of fifteen, completing credits by examination, online courses, and on-campus courses at local community colleges and universities and finally transferring them all to Thomas Edison State College in 2012. There were many trials that I had to tackle independently: analyzing which courses to take, when, and what method, determining passing scores, while still practicing piano, and teaching up to twenty piano students a week.

A great turning point was required to complete my magnum opus, specifically my first Advanced Placement (AP) test subjected Chemistry. It was probably the most difficult exam I had ever studied for. Not only was the subject complex, but I had to self-study all the topics with little outside help. I did take a co-op course in Honors Chemistry, but even weekly classes and labs only scratched the surface of the deep subject matter. Many concepts and ideas that I thought were easy to understand or grasped with mere, rote memorization in my high school chemistry class were unintelligible squiggles in the more advanced college textbooks. I perused several high school and college level texts, thoroughly studying, quizzing, and testing all materials cover to cover. Every section had to be skimmed, deciphered, read, sliced, chopped, and digested into little pieces before I felt I was anywhere near understanding. Each practice test I took was not a gentle slope to the top score, 5, but rather a series of bumps and dips, with scores ranging from lower 2s to higher 4s.

As doomsday, May 9, 2010, approached, I felt excruciatingly ill-prepared, even though my later test scores ranged around 3-4. With much prayer, moral and emotional support from my family, I entered the testing center and religiously followed the proctor’s instructions. The multiple choice was actually easier than the practices had been; not because the subjects were shallow, but because the questions and answers were succinctly written and simpler to understand.

The free-response questions, on the other hand, were a different story. Of all the different possibilities of chemical equations that I had studied with a fine-tooth comb, they just had to pick the ones that I had the most trouble with. I deduced some educated-guesses with decent results, and moved on, only to find the next section was even more difficult! I stared at the problem, re-reading repeatedly. I definitely recalled a similar problem, even remembered solving it, but for some reason, I could not make the words on the paper answer the question in accurately. Finally, at the last few minutes, I hastily scrambled to write a small paragraph. Smoke fumed from the paper as I furiously scribbled the answers to the third and last question that I finally had a stable grip on.

With the results arriving in four to six weeks, impatient waiting was pure agony. Every morning, I thought, “What if the sheets are mailed today? What score will I get?" and every evening, “No! It didn't come today! Maybe low, bad scores are given out later than passing or higher scores.” One day, after I trekked home from piano lessons, my sisters swung open the front door and cried out, “The results are here! Open the letter!” Slightly shaking, I grabbed the envelope out of their hands, shut my eyes, inhaled deeply, and slowly tore open the upper flap. Staring in shock, I could hardly believe my eyes! I got the highest score, a 5! My mom, sisters, and I all screamed together, jumping up and down. Obviously, we celebrated with lots of ice cream and laughter.

Later, I realized that, as cliché as it sounds, I can do anything I put my mind to do, as long as I invest all my effort. For sure, there were several more difficult classes that I took later, like self-studying AP Biology, Java Programming that I took without an introductory class because _someone_ said it was easy, and Music History, with several long papers and a painfully strict professor (talk about blood, sweat and tears! But maybe not the blood part…). Truth be told, I agree with the old saying: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” With lots of prayer and hard work, nothing is impossible.