Mercy by Bryan

Mercy by Bryan - April 2019 Scholarship Essay

I attend a dual-enrollment high school, on San Joaquin Delta College’s campus in Stockton, California, meaning that I take high school and college classes at the same time. Because our high school only has a total student population of around 240 students, we have a very small amount of actual high school teachers. Many of the other classes that normal high schools would have, like foreign language, are replaced with equivalent classes that we can take on campus with the college.
By no means am I a perfect student. The past four years of my academic career have admittedly been my lowest in terms of performance. Generally, I do well in my high school classes and receive A letter grades, but I lag quite a bit in my college classes. In my sophomore year of high school, I took college-level Spanish classes to fulfill my foreign language requirements. Although I loved the class, the professor, and the language, I had trouble in the class. At the end of the first semester, Spanish 1, I received a B letter grade, but at the end of my second semester, Spanish 2, I received a D letter grade. I took both classes with the same professor, but in the second semester, I was having a lot of difficulty focusing in school, and on Spanish 2 in particular. For the final, I studied all week and the whole night before, but it wasn’t enough to save my grade. I was devastated with the idea that I would have to retake the class, but I knew I didn’t any other option. When I came back to school the next school year, I ran into my Spanish professor in a staircase on campus. She pulled me aside and told me that she was surprised that I had failed and told me that she did not want me to, so she offered me a chance to save my grade from that semester, if I redid a major assignment. If I redid the assignment and did it perfectly, it would give me enough points to bring my grade up 2%, just what I needed to reach a passing C-. I thanked my professor, holding back my tears and happiness, and let her know that I would have it done by the end of the semester.
Over the course of the fall semester of my junior year, I worked on the Spanish assignment on my free time and completed it two weeks before the end of the semester. I met her at her office, turned in the assignment, and thanked her endlessly for the opportunity to save my Spanish 2 grade. This situation where I overcame an academically challenging situation was not entirely my doing. I tried my best in the latter half of my Spring semester to improve my grade, but I fell short. What really saved me that semester was the kindness and mercy that my Spanish professor showed me. Most professors would let their students fail and retake the class, but she did not want to see me fail, she wanted to see me succeed and that is what truly helped me overcome my challenge.