Coming of Age Rough Draft

How I Survived 8th Grade

My coming of age moment happened when I was in the 8th grade.  Up to that point, school seemed like kind of a breeze for me.  I was able to comprehend and understand most of the information in my classes and that in turn resulted in me attaining pretty good grades.  However, in hindsight, many of my elementary teachers were pretty laid back in that they didn’t assign as much homework or projects that you think they would, especially trying to prepare us for that next level.  Then, when I reached middle school, things got a whole lot more difficult.  There was so much more projects, due dates, homework, you name it.  The teachers were constantly assigning new assignments.  That being said, I was still able to pull through while maintaining a solid 3.8 grade point average.  Having accomplished that, I figured that 8th grade wouldn’t seem so challenging and in the beginning I was right.  The first two quarters, I was able to keep up the good grades...the road ahead was looking great.  Then it happened.

Halfway through 8th grade, I just got hit by a brick wall.  I don’t remember the exact date but my whole world turned upside down.  I wasn’t doing my homework, wasn’t paying attention in class, wasn’t studying which resulted in bad test grades, etc.  I didn’t understand what was happening to me.  This built up so much frustration inside that almost every night while I was lying in bed I would start asking myself questions like, “How did this happen” or “Why can’t I focus.”  Then came the worse part.  Since I wasn’t doing my assignments and my parents checked jupiter grades often, they asked me one day, “What are all of these?” “Why are they missing?”“Didn’t you turn these in?” I was so afraid to find out what they might have done if I told them the truth that I was falling behind in school, that I actually lied.  I made up a story about turning all of these assignments in but my teachers just didn’t update it.  My parents believed me since I never lied before and I was such a good student.  So I went along with it but I felt a pang of disgust inside and the guilt that I lied just kept on recurring in my mind.  However, as the days went along I found that lying just became easier and easier.  

Ultimately though, my poor performance started to raise a “red flag” to everyone.  Luckily for me, my teachers were very kind cause they all knew that I was a much better student than what I had been showing.  Most of them would call me in to talk after school and would ask me the typical questions like, “ What’s going on?” or “Why aren’t you turning these in?”  And I simply couldn’t answer them because I myself didn’t know what was going on or why I didn’t have the urge to turn these assignments in.  My parents also realized something wasn’t right and I remember having these long talks with them about why I wasn’t performing as well as before.  Naturally,  since I didn’t have any good answers for them, they assumed that I was just being lazy.  They began to take away my privileges (phone, ipad, watching tv, etc.) in hopes that that would kick start my work habits, but it didn’t.  Oh, it may have worked for a couple of days but eventually everything went back down.  Things came to a head when in math class I ended up missing at least 10 assignments and my dad found out in a conference with my teacher.  Man, I’ve never seen him that mad before…..ever! I thought I was going to be grounded for life but my mom and grandma were convinced that something else had to be physically wrong with me.

They took me to the doctors and it was discovered that I had hyperthyroidism or Graves Disease.  Hypothyroidism is the overactivity of your thyroid gland resulting in a rapid heartbeat and an increased rate of metabolism.  Because of that you have a hard time concentrating since it is like your brain is running a mile in a minute.  All of a sudden everything was starting to make sense to me because a lot of the symptoms were what I was experiencing.  No wonder I was having a such hard time sitting still and felt like my brain was always in a “fog”!  We linked that to my performance in school and as soon as I started to take medication, everything started started to come back into focus.  I could concentrate again!  I could finally have a restful night’s sleep!  My study habits came back to normal as well as my grades.  

Throughout all of this the main lesson that I learned was not to lie no matter how bad the situation.  My parents and teachers all stressed to me that if they didn’t see that potential they wouldn’t have come down so hard on me, but they knew that I wasn’t living up to it both as a student and an individual.  Just knowing that they had this much belief in me made me feel motivated to never let that kind of thing happen again.  I guess till this day, that is why I have been trying my hardest in everything that I do because in the back of my mind I don’t want to let all of the people that have fought for or believed in me down.