Accidental Lessons by Christina

Accidental Lessons by Christina - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

I have learned a lot of important lessons from different teachers. My earliest memory of teachers is helping me learn new things. My teachers taught me how to spell, eventually read, and then write. They subsequently taught me to think critically and muscle through hard work. However it is my belief that the best lessons are not taught intentionally.
In my 12th grade year, my last year of high school, I decided to take a teacher's class named Mrs. Viau. At first I was skeptical about taking the class but figured since it was going to be my last year in high school I should take a chance. Math has always been my favorite subject, so I figured there wouldn't be any hard topics in AP Statistics that I couldn't grasp. I quickly realized what a challenge the class was going to be. Not simply because of the coursework, but because of who I was getting the coursework from. I spoke with my mom about it and I didn't know why my teacher didn't like me. I knew it wasn’t because of my race, background, or manners. My mom said maybe she could've had a bad coworker at one point or another who looked just like me.
For about a marking period, which is several weeks, I decided that because she didn't like me that statistics didn't like me and it became harder and harder for me to do well in the class. I came home with a bad grade and I told my mom knows because my teacher did not like me. I felt she was trying to give me an unfair grades and make fun of me in class etc. However, I had a discussion with myself and decided that my statistics teacher had absolutely nothing to do with my future.
This AP class was going to show my future professors and college just how capable I was of handling hard work. I just decided not to focus on it. At the end of the year, after we took our big AP exam in May, I got a five. This is the highest possible score on any AP exam. My teacher sent me an email and congratulated me. It was in that moment that I realize that it doesn't matter what kind of a teacher you have or what kind of a classroom setting you are in. Anybody can be given a bad setting, it is what you do with it that makes the difference.