Failure to Perseverance to Success by Kevin

Failure to Perseverance to Success by Kevin - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

Failure: a fear that encompasses the path to success seeming relentless at times with little to no forgiveness. Failure is a concept that I have learned to be a reality in my life which, at times, has made me reevaluate my ability to reach a set goal. And yes, I have failed at many goals as well as come on the verge of giving up on certain goals, but recently I have learned a significant, impactful lesson throughout the course of my junior year in high school about failure.

Now, most lessons come about through single events throughout your adolescence and even into your adulthood, but this particular lesson in my life extended through a whole school year. Combined with failure, a drawn out lesson isn’t the best of experiences, but what I got out of it has allowed me to see life in a different light.

I love challenging myself academically, but the challenge of taking a college level Spanish class in high school (Spanish 4 AP) has easily been my most difficult academic challenge in my education career as I began learning Spanish with no preliminary knowledge whatsoever. I didn’t think I could accomplish the goal of not only passing the Spanish AP Exam, but ultimately passing the class. In the year before, Spanish 3 was not a requirement in its own respect in order to graduate yet I still wanted to excel in the language and push myself to my limits. So, I took Spanish 3 and held an A with moderate adversity. But little did I know what a college level Spanish class would throw at me. I failed classwork, repeatedly of which I used to achieve easy A’s on. Tests became treacherous beginning with nights and nights of preparation and resulting in nothing more than a solid C or D. I was absolutely struggling to simply hold a B in the class and my teacher never let up. He never gave me an easy way out nor a different treatment than the other Spanish speaking students. He pushed me to my absolute limits forcing me to speak, write, and read in a language I did not know. But over time, I slowly but surely understood more and more as I was continuously pushed to practice in order to succeed in my goal of passing both the class and the AP exam.

Approaching the end of the year, I had become somewhat fluent in the Spanish language in respect to reading, writing, and speaking; something I would have never expected to happen. As the AP exam, my final test of my true knowledge of the Spanish language, arrived, my teacher told me how my life in his class was purposely made difficult so that I would push myself to do great things not only on the AP exam, but in life in general. He purposely made work so difficult for me that failing had the highest probability. He made failing such a real option that I was truly pushed to my academic limits, learning that the fear of failure or encountering failure was very much a real life scenario. But these failures have taught me that sometimes, failing will occur. Sometimes failing is inevitable against the odds, but it is how you persevere through failure that will take you to your dreams and allow you to achieve your goals. Failure is the lesson of which I have learned to see life in a different light. One where hard work and perseverance against adversity can allow you to achieve even the most difficult tasks, even passing the Spanish 4 AP exam which I have accomplished.