Tough Love by Chloe

Tough Love by Chloe - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

While I was a sophomore at New Britain High School, I went through a lot of personal struggles from loss to being kicked out of my own home. During this time, I was taking American Literature taught by my teacher, Mrs. Gorr. In this class, we worked on a lot of essays on the computer but I refused to do a lot of my work because I struggled so much. It wasn't until I was completely honest with her that I learned the biggest lesson that continues to influence my everyday life.

At the time, I was trying to seem like this happy go lucky person without letting too much about me be known, but at home I was struggling with family conflicts. I didn't want my teachers to judge me or get the wrong impression of me. So, I led this double life up until October, when the conflicts became more intense and I would need to leave my house to stay away with my mother. I would tell Mrs. Gorr that everything was fine, I was just having a rough week or I was really tired, any excuse I could think of that would seem reasonable. It wasn't until November that I would actually start telling her the truth.

It was really hard to break down the shell that I had put up, but I managed to break it down. My grandmother had kicked me out of the house and not even two weeks later, she passed away. My teacher had me take a break for that day, since it was the first day I returned from school after my grandmother passed away. I sat in my seat crying my eyes out, Mrs. Gorr understood that I was grieving and needed my space to get all the emotions I was feeling out. Unfortunately, this didn’t help the fact that I hadn’t been doing the work she had been assigning me. Mrs. Gorr ended up calling my mother and telling her I hadn’t done my work for over two months. I was really angry with Mrs. Gorr because I thought she wouldn’t tell my mother that I had been failing.

I learned that it was an act of tough love, she tried helping me but I wouldn’t take it because at the time I didn’t want to better myself. Now, I see it as the push I needed to get back on track because I almost failed that class and almost didn’t receive the credit for that class. However, without that phone call from Mrs. Gorr I wouldn’t have gotten the credit and I would’ve needed to retake American Literature. I love English, reading stories and developing arguments from those ideas stories convey. Mrs. Gorr saw my potential to be in higher level classes, but since I hadn’t been doing my work I wasn’t eligible to be moved up.

Mrs. Gorr making that phone call changed my perspective as to what tough love really is. Tough love is caring about someone even if they deny the help. Sometimes, we need a reality check or a wake up call. This was my wake up call, my mother had never really been invested or cared about my education. She has never been so invested in my education, because she also is the single mother of two, so she has her hands full with my little brother and I. Still, I was not shown the amount of care that Mrs. Gorr put into my education. She had just met me in September and made the call of tough love someone would never have made. Mrs. Gorr currently is more like a mentor to me and I continue to remember her act of kindness in my academic career.