Independence at it's Finest by Jenna

Independence at it's Finest by Jenna - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

These days, teenagers and most adults complicate simple tasks by doing all they can to avoid work instead of just doing it. Some people give up on their dream unless it's handed to them on a silver platter. It should be enstilled in young people that sometimes you need to take responsibility and actually put effort into things.
When I was in ninth grade, I had a geometry teacher who taught me how to be independent and how I could take my learning into my own hands. His teaching style was lecturing at us, giving us optional homework and website/textbook resources to help teach ourselves how to do some harder problems. As one can imagine, my peers were not happy that they weren't being shown every problem in every situation. They claimed he was hard to understand and of course only two people in the entire class did the homework:me and another guy.
He'd tell us that we could figure it out or that we should just try harder. Geometry wasn't easy for me but I did the homework every night, watched videos and practiced problems outside of the homework. I also spent most of my study halls with my teacher to go over problems and things I was confused about. I eventually got the highest grade on the final and passed the class overall with a 96. Some of my classmates cheated, or just didn't care, then they'd complain about their grades.
My teacher taught me that sometimes you don't know what the heck you're doing but you have to plow through it and try your hardest. He'd say that the struggle would be good for us and we'd be able to use this process thoughout life. In fact, two years later in pre-calculus I had to use the same technique and I passed the class with a 94. Sometimes when I think about it, I silently think my geometry teacher for making me work for my grade so I'd be able to work for other things without being overwhelmed.