Persistence by Zachary

Persistence by Zachary - December 2016 Scholarship Essay

Math was always my weakest point when it came to my classes at school, despite the fact that I was very interested in Engineering as a career. With this aspiration in mind, I had a discrepancy between who I wanted to be and the type of person I was inclined to be. This had always frustrated me because I had done so well in all my other classes and just did not understand why Math was so difficult. Luckily, I kept pushing at it because I knew my I would need to excel with this in order to pursue engineering like I had intended to. My persistence with this challenge led me to being in a dual-enrollment college level Calculus course during my senior year of High School, which is one of my proudest school accomplishments.
Many students across the nation are at the same level of math as I am right now, which is why that fact is not as important to me, but the reason I am so proud of this is because it was a very difficult progression to get to this level for myself. From being unsure as to whether or not I wanted to keep taking the honors courses because I was having great difficulty, to doing well in a college-level course during high school was a result of my persistence. This accomplishment reveals the commitment I held for a goal I knew I wanted to reach, and I find it very satisfying to be able to look back and see my progression as a student in this way.
There have been many times when I faced a difficulty and just backed away from it because I found it pointless to try, as failure would be inevitable. With this challenge I finally began to understand the importance of tenacity and persistence when coming across any difficulty. Being able to hone in on these components of character is what allowed me to achieve this goal, and that was a very important accomplishment for myself. Being a previously pessimistic person, who saw no reason combat such challenges since I was probably going to fail, and now seeing the limitless possibilities that come with the persistence I used to achieve this, has given me an entirely new outlook on life.
I had seen myself as another person who hated math because it was difficult, but knew the key to my dream career was being successful with this. Nothing was going to stop me from being proficient with this subject which caused me great frustration. I pushed on and began to understand important things about facing challenges. Finally, after a very long struggle, I have made it to a point where I excel with this and made it to the high-level course I never thought I would be at. This progression, both academically and as a person, is one of my proudest accomplishments and I am happily reminded of it every day I have walked into my UCONN Calculus class so far this year.