Passing AP Physics by Jehan

Passing AP Physics by Jehan - December 2016 Scholarship Essay

There was nothing harder in my four years of high schools than AP Physics. I always knew junior year was the "hardest year" and that colleges look at it more than they look at any year of high school. But this was something that I was not prepared for in any way.
I two AP courses in my sophomore year which was more than the average sophomore took at my high school and so I thought I was ready for junior year as well. A month before school started, a mishap occurred in my schedule which placed me in AP Physics instead of AP Biology, and so my schedule was AP Physics, AP Language, AP United States History, AP Calculus and Principles of Engineering. The counselor gave me an alternate schedule where I would take neither AP Physics nor AP Calculus but I decided that I was up for the challenge. On the first day of physics, the teacher taught us some ridiculously difficult math and said "This should've been taught before, I will quiz you all tomorrow." My score on that first quiz was unspeakably bad. After the third quiz, I realized I needed help from someone else since the online videos and my own hard work wasn't cutting it. I asked the teacher for help and I said, "I'm sorry if this sounds dumb-" and he immediately said, "Jehan, there are no dumb questions, only dumb people. That being said go ahead". I asked him the question and he just stared at my face and said, "I already explained that," and he looked back down at his laptop. I started getting help from one of the students in the class who happened to understand all the concepts because he had taken Calculus beforehand. Every night, we would meet at library and he would tutor me, free of charge and he would help me on my web assignments for that class. Take into account that I also had outlines due for AP U.S. History and essays for A.P. Language, and it was a very difficult year. No matter how much Kent taught me, I never really understood physics.
I would score fairly on the tests, better than a lot of my peers but it wasn't enough to me that I was getting by only passing the tests. I wanted to understand what I was learning and so during Christmas Break I learned all of the physics material that I somehow didn't process before and I understood all of it. It took many hours and a lot of those hours were spent in complete frustration but I understood everything. I almost passed AP Physics without understanding a thing in the class, and my proudest accomplishment was knowing that at the end of the semester, I had left it all out there and that I tried my best and because I tried my best, I understood it all.