My Hero, My Dad by Samantha

My Hero, My Dad by Samantha - October 2019 Scholarship Essay

The person who has inspired me most academically would be my dad. My dad from the time I started bringing home homework would make me sit at the counter and do my homework while he cooked dinner. It didn’t matter what it was, all that mattered was that it got done and it got done correctly. When I started bringing home math homework around the second grade is when things started getting tough academically. I liked math but it was getting harder and I wasn’t good at it, but in third grade while everyone else was learning their times tables and excelling in the harder math I was struggling. My third grade math teacher saw I was struggling to learn the multiplication tables on my own because we didn’t do that in class, so she told me I didn’t need to earn my multiplication tables. He was so mad at that teacher he wanted me out of that class but my principal said that all my dad was doing was teaching me to quit, my dad disagreed but instead of arguing decided he would teach me. My dad basically became my math teacher, he even went out and bought books that taught him how to do, and when I would come home with math homework we would sit at the counter and work together. Most nights it ended with me crying and us yelling but at least it got done.
As I grew older I hated math so much and was doing so bad at it that I gave up and started to just not do my homework. He quickly turned that around by reminding me that not only could I do it but that he was here to help me even if it meant we were up till two o'clock in the morning. When I got to the fifth grade I failed my STAAR math test so I had to take it again or else I wouldn’t get to move up to sixth grade, and let me tell you my dad helped me study every night until my retest, he even thought about signing me up for Sylvan Learning which is like a tutoring service. When I moved schools he helped me not only with my homework but helped me become comfortable with going to a new school. My new math teacher was extremely kind and tried a lot harder to work with me so that my dad didn’t have to as much. I’m eighteen years old and a senior in high school and I still ask my dad for help with my homework and I know that when I go to college if I called him and said dad I need help he would drop whatever he was doing to help me even when he's hours away. Ever since I was little he would tell me if I made the grades he would find a way to pay for whatever college I wanted to go to and now I’m applying for my dream college and I want to make sure he doesn’t have the complete burden of paying for college.