8th Grade Math by Kambria

8th Grade Math by Kambria - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

Middle School is a hard time for everyone. The new people, the moving around to different classrooms, and most importantly the growing up. Growing up from being hand-held with everything to more independence. When I was in eighth grade, at Timber Ridge in Albany Oregon, math was a big struggle for me. During my eighth grade year, I was put into algebra 1 instead of regular eighth grade math. Unfortunately I don’t think my mind was ever really prepared for skipping regular and going into “advanced” math.
I remember being at the end of September of my eighth grade year, and I was not understanding the math at all. I asked other people to see if they understood it and they said they didn’t either. So, I thought I was fine. Later in the semester, we got our progress reports. I was doing terribly. At Timber Ridge they were on a different grading scale, but equivalently it was about a D.
After that happened, I felt horrible. I just knew that I would get in so much trouble if I came home that day with an unsuccessful report card, so I threw it away. Especially since at the time my dad was teaching basic level math and my grandpa was a retired math teacher. Unfortunately I had forgotten that why they gave us those report cards was because conferences were that night. We were supposed to give them to our parents, so when our parents came to conferences that night, they would have had some time to reflect on what was happening in the classroom and the basics of our learning skills.
That night at conferences was the worst. My teacher said I was failing. My parents were shocked because they thought I was doing so well. Conferences ended and my parents called my grandpa right away. That weekend in about February, I was sent to the library where I would study with my grandpa for at least two hours a weekend. So, my failure was two things. First I was too scared to ask for help and secondly since I was too scared, I thought everyone would make fun of me for not being able to do the math. I learned that there are resources out there to help me at least 90% of the time even if it isn’t just math tutoring. Also because of this failure I became a volunteer tutor at my high school. This was because sometimes it is harder to talk to adults about your problems and easier to talk with students your own age because they relate.