Achievable by Jewel

Achievable by Jewel - August 2016 Scholarship Essay

When one is put into a high school Algebra 1 Honors course in one’s eighth grade year, one panics and asks if there has been a mistake. I, however, coming from a Marine father and an ambitious mother, met the brick-wall challenge straight-on and head first. And boy, did it hurt. I was never a brilliant mathematician – I was a writer, a musician. But I did well in my other math courses, despite a few bumps of “WHAT IS THIS BLACK MAGIC?”
Mr. Straw is what we will call him. He was post-Navy, with a strong, solid seriousness that clashed violently with his corniness. His head was a rectangular prism, decorated with more-salt-than-pepper hair and grey-blue eyes that read your mind. I liked him the moment I met him. He made fun of the idea that middle schoolers were intimidated by algebra. “Oh, no! I gotta get outta this class! Algebra’s so hard!” he would squeal at us every time something new came up.
But there’s more to a class than how much you like a teacher. I suffered with my non-mathematician-ness. I constantly had a headache in the classroom, while doing homework. “You’ve almost got it,” Mr. Straw would tell me. “Look at this problem in the book. It’s the same thing.” So I looked. And I learned painfully slow. “It’s always a good idea to study,” Mr. Straw announced to the class. “Even when you think you understand it all.”
So I decided that I would study every day. I used my textbook and completed all the problems in the book. Mr. Straw directed my research for online tutorials and practice worksheets. I went to school early to get extra help. Eventually, when the phrase “algebra” did not start a headache, I realized that I was improving.
But it never occurred to me how much I was improving. One day, we were given a worksheet with what seemed like a hundred problems involving division. It took me hours to finish it, complete with a separate scratch sheet of paper to show all of my work. But even after such grueling work, I forgot about it as soon as it was turned in. Later on, I was having a stressful day with too much to do at the end of a grading quarter. Mr. Straw passed out graded assignments, red pen marking wrong answers and scores on every page. He handed me a stark-white paper with pencil and printer ink graying its brightness. It was the division worksheet. Not a single red slash or “X” marked through the question numbers, not an ugly grade marked the page for execution. Instead, the red pen ink was in large, loopy script: “100%! I’m so proud of you!” I burst into tears. I was exhausted, tired, but I did it!
Mr. Straw had, rather discreetly, inspired me to achieve. He showed me how to find out exactly what I wanted to know. He helped me believe in myself. What is the most important lesson I have learned from a teacher? Nothing is as hard it seems.

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