It’s not hard, it’s just in Italian. by Erika

It’s not hard, it’s just in Italian. by Erika - April 2016 Scholarship Essay

My Physics teacher has a thick Indian accent, which can make the technicalities of the course hard to understand. Combining his accent with my classmates' poor behavior does not make for a productive learning environment. As the first marking period came to a close, I received a seventy on my exam. In order to ensure that I passed with an A the next marking period I had to start out strong so I focused harder. During one class period I almost went to tears when it registered to me that I would be taking collegiate level sciences in my Neuroscience major. My physics class was a remedial high school level course and I was hardly scraping by; who knew what would happen if I had to wrestle with a college level course; let alone Neuroscience. The severity of my dilemma hit me like a freight train. I turned to friends in search of assistance, but they turned out to be unreliable. I have a physics textbook at home and I came to the conclusion that the only way I would pass this class with at least a ninety was if I studied on my own.
I took to read the textbook and took notes on everything. I felt proud until I hit a wall made of a. impossible formula. I created my own diagrams, took to trying the formula out on normal household objects, but nothing worked. In order for the formula to make sense I would have to disprove the Pythagorean Theorem. When I called my buddy, she told me of how she struggled with Algebra. She was acing all of her other classes and refused to accept that she couldn’t understand Math. She began to tell herself that she already understood Algebra, she was good at it, in fact; it was just written in Italian, and she didn’t speak Italian. I didn’t understand. I returned to the textbook and whispered to myself “I am good at Physics, but this...this is Italian. All I have to do is learn Italian.”
I stared at the page and reviewed the problem once more. Finally, I understood that the missing step in the textbook was the one my teacher had pulled from his hat, in class Just like that, I spoke Italian.