Potential by Gabrielle

Potential by Gabrielle - March 2014 Scholarship Essay

When I entered into my freshman year of high school I was, for lack of a better word, lazy. I had always known that I had the ability to achieve academic success, which is part of the reason I thought I could get away without studying or doing any of my homework. However, when I received my report card that first semester I knew that I had to step up my game. My GPA was a lot lower than my parents knew I was capable of, so we would attend parent-teacher conferences in which my teachers would inform them of how I was able to perform well on tests and quizzes but I was missing so many homework assignments that they were unable to bring my grades up to where they should've been. One word would constantly keep making its way into these conferences and that word was potential.

All of my teachers, my parents, and even I knew that I had potential but for some reason, I could not get it into my head that I needed to actually put forth the effort in order to reach this potential. I got my wakeup call during the first meeting I had with my counselor who stripped my schedule of all the honors classes that I was taking and I was forced into classes that were way behind what I was capable of for my sophomore year. The reason this affected me so much was because all of my friends were in the honors program and I began to feel left out. So, I decided to finally start putting in the effort to get where I needed to be and the results were successful. I was able to get nearly straight A’s my sophomore year, and was reunited with my friends in the honors program the following year.
For this reason, I recognize my sophomore year of high school as one of my greatest academic achievements.

Without this year, I wouldn’t have been able to realize what I needed to change in order to get back on track. My GPA has since risen and I plan to receive my Academic Honors Diploma in June. My sophomore year of high school was one of my greatest academic achievements because it allowed me to see all of my abilities and the potential that I had to succeed.