One Piece Of Advice: Focus by Jessika

One Piece Of Advice: Focus by Jessika - November 2014 Scholarship Essay

This is one of my favorite questions to answer yet, I find it so complicated to answer. In my freshman year of high school I did everything absolutely wrong. I got almost straight C’s, I didn’t get involved, I didn’t make an effort to make friends and most importantly, I didn’t take my academics seriously. Now, I can go into detail about every little thing I did wrong but, I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m just going to talk about the most important topic: academics. I know, boring right? But, I can’t stress this enough. Take your academics and education seriously. Freshman year actually does count!

One of the biggest myths about freshman year is that it doesn’t count. It actually does count! Trust me, someone told me that no one will ever see my freshman year grades so it’s okay to slack off. That was one of my biggest mistakes i've made in high school and guess what? That decision to slack off still affects me to this day! It affects my college applications and college process drastically. Now, let me rewind and take you back to my freshman year quickly. Since I heard that freshman year doesn’t count, I didn’t do my homework, I didn’t study, I didn’t take notes, I didn’t care about anything that had to do with school. My grades clearly showed how much I cared about school. I actually raised my D’s to C’s and I was surprisingly proud of myself. That’s how low my standards for myself and my education were. It got to the point where I was .10 points away from failing my algebra 1 class. Yes, it really did get that bad.

Now fast forward to the present, senior year. College panning time, yay! Now you must be wondering how my freshman year affected me so much even still to this day. Well, since I slacked off in 9th grade, my 9th grade G.P.A was very low. Back then I didn’t know what a cumulative G.P.A was and how important it was. For those who don’t know, a cumulative G.P.A is your G.P.A based on all four years of high school, not just one quarter or semester. This is important because it represents how you serious you are about your education and basically how smart you are.

After my freshman year, it clicked for me and I realized that I needed to take my academics seriously, so after that I got very good grades and was never off the honor roll. Even though my grades improved dramatically, my cumulative G.P.A is still low. Because of that, I wasn’t able to join the National Honors Society with my friends, I’m not qualified for a lot of important scholarships and my chance of being accepted to college is lowered. I didn’t know all of this in 9th grade. All I knew was that freshman year didn’t count, so do whatever you want. If that person didn’t tell me that, my freshman year would have been completely different.

That is why I feel like it’s so important for incoming freshmen to know and understand that every decision and choice you make will have some sort of outcome or consequence. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Focus on your school work and your education right from the start and I promise, you're going to be glad you did in the future.