Taking a Step Back by Diana

Taking a Step Back by Diana - August 2022 Scholarship Essay

Sitting at my desk, I stare down at the grades that I found myself in my first semester at college. A gut feeling sat at the bottom of my stomach. How was I going to tell my parents that I hadn’t performed at my highest potential? What stood in front of me felt like a failure. It felt like a journey had come to an end, an easy coast to success. Throughout my entire academic career, I’ve always found myself coasting through grades and success. It came to me naturally, or so I thought. This led to taking a step back. Where did I go wrong? What was I missing? What had broken the easy path of good grades and success? I reevaluated my performance in each class. It might have been the homework, I found myself realizing I could’ve put more effort into homework assignments if I had taken the time to do so. But it wasn’t just that. There was more. There was something there. When I looked back, I realized that my test scores weren’t what I was hoping for, which felt confusing at first considering that I felt confident in my test scores. I took another step back and spoke to my roommate about it. Just like any other roommate talk, I asked her how she felt her exam went. She described to me the normal anxiety-inducing trait of sitting down for an exam. But something was missing.

“Didn’t you hear that guy breathing so hard though?” I asked her.

“No, I didn’t even realize.”

“Okay, but like that pencil squeaking was so annoying right? It made it so hard to concentrate!”

“Not really, I noticed it but it went away.”

I sat there thinking. What was the puzzle piece missing? All throughout high school, it had been easy coasting. I was getting A’s and B’s. It was a piece of cake for me. What had changed in the time that I had left the classroom in person till now? Something was there blocking my performance. Making sure that I couldn’t reach the top.

Taking another step back, I had to realize that I couldn’t exactly do this all on my own. I needed some support. Who can help me though? I was too scared to tell my parents, I felt a sense of shame incoming. The only person that came to my mind was my academic advisor. The next day, I did just that. I went to her office and sat there, knees trembling and all. Noticing everything that was happening around me.

In a matter of minutes, my advisor took another step back with me and helped me really evaluate what school has been for me. What I saw and felt during this environment was what set me apart from the rest. The emotions, the nerves, all of it. My hyper-awareness of every single movement in a classroom deterred me from moving forward on an assignment. It was all there.

“You know, you might possibly have ADHD. Have you ever been tested for it?” My advisor told me as we sat there in her office together, looking over my midterm grades. I hadn’t really considered it. It was something so small in my life that wasn’t worth putting time and effort into that I pushed it away the entire school year. I thought, "Nah. It can't be me. I got this. I just need to spend more time in the library, that's all I need." Too scared to even think about the fact of having to go through what is the long process of finding a psychiatrist that works under my health insurance, making an appointment, going through multiple tests, and more pushed me away even further. I was just an eighteen-year-old girl. Who was I to be making doctor appointments all on my own?

Things did not look pretty for me for the rest of the school year, to say the least.

So with that being said, an academic goal for me is not getting straight A’s. It’s not getting a high test score. It isn’t accomplishing my goal of studying 3+ hours every day. For me, it is getting the needed testing. It is taking the initiative to change the course of my academics, and finding ways that will help me as a student succeed. It’s learning about what study method works best for me, how I feel in certain testing environments, and what ways I can overcome that to succeed both academically and in my confidence as a student. Being a student isn’t always a shining star. It takes time and acknowledgment of how you work in order to be able to reach the top. And sometimes, finding solutions to best accommodate your needs is the direst thing someone can do.