Stranded but not stuck by Luke

Stranded but not stuck by Luke - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

Imagine all your friends moving onto the next grade together while you had been left behind. Not knowing anyone, wondering why you were repeating a grade and no one else was. The sense of failure crushing down your self worth. That was the situation that I was in; I had to repeat the first grade because my reading skills were sub par compared to those of my classmates.
At the end of the first day of school I decided that I would do whatever I needed to do to catch up. I would not let this failure define my life and what I wanted to do with it. I never wanted to feel the way that I did on the first day of school. For the first time ever, I practiced reading whenever I had the chance. It did not matter what the context was; I read anything and everything I could get my hands on including restaurant menus and billboard signs. I took every opportunity and chance to improve my reading skill that came my way. Every morning I would read parts of the local newspaper out loud to get my reading skills to where they should of been. Instead of playing with the toys at Barnes and Nobles, I would read books to my mom.
I took the failure of being held back as a challenge to make sure that it never happened again. Failing at an early age made me work harder to make sure that it would never happen again. I put in extra effort in school and sports ensuring that I was doing everything possible to never let it happen again. Now in my senior year of high school I am being inducted into the National Honors Society. Being held back for having difficulties reading indirectly caused me to form a passion for reading that is still with me today. Failure is only okay if you take the lesson that it taught you and never let it happen again.