Sometimes a Change is Necessary by Emma

Sometimes a Change is Necessary by Emma - April 2019 Scholarship Essay

For most of my academic career, I was homeschooled. My mother had never wanted to be apart from her children for eight hours a day, she had always wanted to be with us, to teach us, to spend quality time with us whenever possible. It had also been best for us to be homeschooled since we moved nearly once a year for most of my childhood.
However, it was always an issue that my mother had to work. She worked from home, so she was with us and could answer questions, but since she was working it was hard to give us the full attention necessary to teach a child and to impart strong focus in schoolwork. We always made it through though, until I was in junior high school. One of my sisters, the sister closest in age to me, was in high school at the time as well. Since all my other siblings had gone off to college, my mother decided to pursue a lifelong dream - one that had been interrupted by having children young, and although she never regretted it, the dream never died - of getting her college degree. It was wonderful for her to be in school again, learning and living and fulfilling that dream.
But as she continued in school, she became busier and busier. First, it was eighteen credit semesters to finish school on time, then it was working full time to support herself and my sister and me, then it was working as the photography editor of the college newspaper, and slowly she was gone all the time. By this time my parents had separated and divorced, and my sister and I found ourselves rather in charge of our own education. The problem was mainly that, in junior high and high school you are learning such critical lessons and at such an advanced level that all the books in the world cannot replace a teacher. We began to struggle in school, and I remember distinctly how much I worried about how bad I seemed at mathematics and science.
My freshman year of high school, and my sister’s junior year, our mother decided it was time to send us to public school. It was impossible to ask a person to work full time, attend a university full time, and school two children. You’d have to be superhuman. So we started in public school, and it was an amazing experience. Although we had new challenges, socially especially, and new experiences left and right - we also learned the importance of having a teacher who specializes in a subject help you along. I learned that not only was I not bad at math or science, but I also loved math and succeeded in it. Because my family decided to turn to professionals and receive help in my sister’s and my schooling, I learned many important lessons in life and in academics and was able to succeed my classes in ways I had never thought I could. I went on to take advanced math courses throughout high school, and I found that you really can find a lot of joy in something as simple as algebra or as complex as calculus if only you turn to those who know how to help you do it right.