Study Now, Succeed Later by McKade

Study Now, Succeed Later by McKade - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

Growing up, I never struggled in school. I never needed to worry about completing homework, I never prepared for a test, and I would often times pretend to be sick so that I wouldn’t have to go in. This was all because school came so easy to me. My grades were great; I didn’t have a B on my report card from first through fifth grade. I’m not telling you all of this to brag about myself. On the contrary, I’m telling you this because it was a problem. When I would come home and tell my parents how I didn’t have to try to excel in school, my dad would always tell me the same story about his experiences in college. He, too, never had to study growing up. He made it all the way through high school without studying, and he finished fifth in his graduating class of 500. He enrolled at Georgia Tech, expecting to roll through college as well, but failed out after two semesters. Why? Because he didn’t know how to study, and college was much more difficult than high school ever was. This story scared me; I didn’t want to fail out of college, too! But I also didn’t see a reason to study. It wasn’t helpful to me. It was boring, and it took up time that I wanted to spend playing outside with my friends.
I made it through middle school without studying either. By the time I got to high school, I was perceived by many of my peers to be the future valedictorian of our class. But after my freshman year, I was ranked outside of the top 10 percent of my class. I couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong, and I was desperate to try anything to boost my grades, which had always been so high before. When I entered my sophomore year, I had a chemistry teacher that was known throughout the school as an amazing all-around teacher and even a friend to many of his students. I figured I could easily get by in his class the same way I used to get by in elementary and middle school. However, after 6 weeks of class, my grade in his class was lower than my grade in any other class. When I presented him with my problem, the first question that he asked of me was not what I was doing in the classroom to improve my grades, but what I was doing outside of the classroom. I didn’t understand; I didn’t see how focusing on academics outside of school could help my issues inside the school. He explained that I should be spending at least half an hour each night reviewing what was going on in each subject area as well as spending at least two hours studying the night before every quiz or test. I protested, but he just smiled and asked how committed I was to improving my grades.
For the rest of the semester, I implemented his policy of studying nightly and studying for two hours before every test or quiz, but I only studied for his class. By the end of the semester, I had one of the top grades in the class, and I aced the final exam. Because the strategy worked so well, I started using it for all of my classes during second semester of that year. I finished the semester back in the top 10 percent of my class all because my chemistry teacher took the time to teach me how to study. Now, I don’t have to worry about failing out of college after two semesters. I have the confidence because of one teacher to spend time outside of the normal classroom setting reviewing materials and staying fresh for tests.