A Blessing in Disguise? by TaShe

A Blessing in Disguise? by TaShe - August 2014 Scholarship Essay

As I logged onto the school website to view my final grades, my heart pounded through my chest. My chemistry class had been giving me the blues all semester, and it was finally the time of truth. I could only hope that I had passed because in my heart, I knew that I struggled with every test, every quiz, and every single homework assignment. Chemistry has never been my forte, but I have always managed to pull through. This time was different though.

I danced around the room as I waited for my phone to load and pull up the grades on the bright screen. Moments later, there it was… a big, fat “F” staring right at me. I sat in disbelief, hoping and praying that my eyes were deceiving me. I had never seen an F on my transcript, so this feeling was brand new to me. It was a feeling I never wanted to feel in my school career. But there was no denying or ignoring it.

So many questions zipped through my brain in such a small period of time. How was I going to tell my mother? How was I going make up for this F? How would I ever be able to bring my GPA back up? For a split second, I almost allowed these thoughts to defeat me. I was even thinking to myself, “There is no way that an A and B student, such as me, received an F in Chemistry.” Then I realized I have to humble myself.

Everyone slips up from time to time, even the smartest of us. Sometimes it takes a failure in life to teach you something new about yourself and to better equip you for life. At that moment, I had to put on my “big girl” pants and fix what I had created, and prove to myself that I can do better.

That summer, I made the hard decision to go to summer school to retake that same chemistry class. Of course no one wants to attend class during the summer break, but unfortunately, part of growing up is doing things that you do not necessarily want to do, but have to do. I was extremely reluctant to sit in a class on a summer day, and learn things that I attempted to learn doing the spring semester. I had my doubts, my concerns, and I was unsure of how well I was going to do, especially with summer school being at a much faster pace.

I was nervous, but I had no choice but to pass this class or else it was going to interfere with my entire college career. I listened hard to the teacher, took pictures of the notes to avoid writing while the teacher was lecturing, and I made sure to make time for studying instead of creating excuses for myself like I did the last time.

Weeks went by, and I was noticing that I was one of the few people in the summer class that was passing. During that summer, I went from the girl who was always asking questions, to the girl everyone wanted to be her study partner. I aced quizzes and nailed tests all through the summer and my final grade ended up being a B. When I saw the letter “B” sitting directly across from the course name on my transcript, I was elated. Words cannot express my happiness and the amount of relief I felt to have gotten one more science course off my list of classes to complete for graduation.

This experience taught me several lessons that I will carry with me for the rest of my adult life. Number one, life will not always give you a “do-over.” Most of the mistakes I will make in the future, I will not be able to go back and fix. So in order to get desired results the first time, I have to be willing to put in the time and the effort. Number two, never let failure defeat me. Failure does not exist to tear you down, but rather to teach you some type of valuable lesson and equip you for future endeavors and the obstacles it may bring. And number three, good things can come out of bad situations. Failing a class for the first time was one of the worst feelings I have ever felt, and it seemed for a moment that all hope was lost. But in the end, I learned so much that I gained more than I had lost. In the weirdest way, failing my chemistry course was a blessing in disguise. It humbled me, gave me a stronger mindset, helped me to better prioritize my life to ensure that education was the focus, and I even gained new learning skills to help me along the way. Now, of course I would not do it again, but it was definitely a learning experience that I now consider one of the many bricks used to build my future empire.