The hefty red book with the petite, black letters printed sat on the timber, yellow table. It was another dull morning and my parents had no clue I was taking my ACT practice test from The Princeton Review book the third time striving to hit the 30 mark for once. I look at the big, grimy book with worn out eyes; there were the noticeable words and the same exact structure of the exam ridiculing me saying I was going to hit the high 20s for my composite score again. I remember finishing the exam feeling all drained out. I finish grading my exam, using up all the red ink I had left. I felt a plethora of feelings: optimistic, tense, and accomplishment. My dull eyes stared at the top right corner of my composite score. After reading the two-digit numbers, three and two, I knew nothing else mattered. “32!” I directed my fingers at the number and broke into a happy dance. As I recall back to a tumblr post a while ago, Steve Jobs also scored a 32 on the ACT. Unexpectedly, I have gotten the same score on my practice test. I have scored the same score as Steve Job, the chairman of Apple Inc., but also broke the …show more content…
30 mark for the first time. Nothing else mattered. For once in my life, I felt as if I had finally done something to make myself proud.
I had proved to myself that spending $10 on this book and taking endless practice questions does pay off! Despite my previous achievements, such as being part of the National Honor Society, Student Government representative, attending a scholarship program called Rosie’s Theatre Kids, or scoring nearly a perfect score on the ELA exam back in fifth grade, nothing seemed like enough for me. I felt as if getting a low 90 for my grade point average would bring me down from getting accepted into a prestigious university such as University of Michigan, one of my desired school to attend, I was satisfied. My goal was fulfilled for my high school academic career, like being a traveler achieving his/her dream with a case of wanderlust in one year. I could tell that from my unfading
smile. After an hour of feeling gratified about myself, it just hit me. I scored a 32 on the ACT practice exam and I felt the weight of the world lifted off my shoulder. Even though it may not sound something worth to be accomplishing, I was proud. It was one of those day where I could hear the word “accomplishment” yelling at me with fulfillment. I gave myself another chance, a chance to realized that I did have hope of getting into a good school. I felt like I was one step closer to my goal. I felt satisfied with myself for once. I didn’t feel hopeless like I was going to get rejected from colleges. Just because I scored well on this practice exam did not mean I don’t have the ability to retain this skill onto my academics at school. I wanted to be the boy who could finally be content with himself. I think that if I play my cards right, destiny will unfold the way I want it to. Slowly, I see my achievements piecing together. One by one, as the pieces line up, I see myself on one side and word success written all over on the other side. I realize that as long as I have a good study habit and continue striving for the best, I can achieve anything. In the darkest time, I would crumble down at home thinking to myself that I’m not good enough to succeed in life. However, I taught myself that I needed to pick myself up and go achieve for my ambition no matter what obstacles may be in my way.
Rose tells of his experiences in high school and prep school and later his college days. He contributes a lot of what he learned to his former friends and instructors. Rose spoke of a student Ken Harvey, when the instructor asked Ken his opinion about working hard, doing the best that you can do, talents and other things, Ken thought about it and replied “I just wanna be average.” (3) Rose talks about what different students do to survive in the system, what challenges they had and how some of them emerged victorious. He talks about his own deliverance from vocational education and how it started in his sophomore year with biology when “Brother Clint” (4) realized that he was getting good grades and discovered the mistake in Rose’s records and recommended College Prep. It seemed to send him into a different world. According to Rose college prep was an improvement over the vocational Education that he had just came from. He...
Bird, Caroline. "College is a Waste of Time and Money." The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Expository Prose. 9th ed. Ed. Linda H. Peterson et. al. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. 481-490.
There’s a longing for university teachers that want to help a generation change towards a passion pass just obtaining a degree or just trying to “get by” with non-solid attempts to pass classes with purpose instead of mediocracy. In Edmundson’s essay titled: Liberal Arts & Lite Entertainment, he displays a stern direction for students to go beyond surface levels of education despite of the professors’ complacency have “created a university environment in which facile skepticism can thrive without being substantially contested” (20). His motives and purpose started to show early in the text “I want some of them to say that they’ve been changed by the course. I want them to measure themselves against what they’ve read.” (Edmundson 5). He wants
Before that life-changing moment, I used to immerse myself in striving for academic achievement in the hope of winning favour, acceptance and belonging in my family, but also for its own rewards as I found pure pleasure and passion in writing and reading.
College success has become a most desirable goal. However, many students struggle through college. In fact, according to the Website Ask.com, approximately 15 percent of college students receive a degree. Because I’m willing to earn a degree like many other successful students, I find that college is the stepping stone to my dream goals. I know that college is difficult, but I realize that attaining my dream of a college education will require me to understand the benefits of what I’m learning, to prepare for obstacles, to seek advice, and to create effective and reasonable strategies will help me achieve my goals.
A Journey to Amelioration The primary theme of my Senior Spring Project will be self-improvement. While I have been happy with my time in High School so far, I definitely have a lot of maturing to do before I will be ready for College. My intention throughout the project is to mature both mentally and physically. In order to mature mentally, I’ve decided to not drop two of my more difficult classes.
Finally, I’m home after a full week of tryouts. One full week of hard work and lots of soreness. I just sat in front of the computer screen. I had dinner there and watched T.V from there. I was just waiting the moment for coach to put up the numbers of the people who had made the team online. I was nervous but confident, I felt that I tried my best and gave it all I could and actually felt like coach liked me. Especially because after the last session he said, “Great job. I see your passing and shooting are really good and I like that.” When I heard those words come out of his mouth I felt that I had automatically made the soccer squad.
In junior year I began the class, and looked forward to the class periods... I could survive 5 tests beforehand as long as I knew I would see Mr. Kilcup’s smiling face greeting me at the door. Meanwhile, my grades soared and I extended my contributions to the community. Though I had taken my own choice electives, they hadn’t sparked my interest in this degree. This class material was interesting to me and I didn’t feel forced to pay attention, I craved
Title: Clearing the Path for Low-Income Students to Achieve College Success In 2004, I embarked on a journey to graduate from college. My family and teachers encouraged me to aim high, to test my abilities, and to reach for the proverbial stars. In their eyes, I could accomplish anything despite the reality that a low-income child in our country has an 8% chance of finishing a college degree.
From this chapter I have learned a lot about myself and how to study. Before I never really understood the different ways I studied, I just knew what seemed to work. I now understand why those techniques were successful. Now that I am aware I am a mostly a visual learner, have an integrated brain, and have bodily-kinesthetic and logical-mathematical intelligence, I look forward to implementing the newly learned studying techniques with the old, making my college experience as successful as possible.
It all started when Ms. McCrystal began a lesson on how evolutionary changes impacted the lives of other organisms. Allie knew something interesting was going to happen, because Ms. McCrystal was the most engaging teacher on team 8-1. The very next day Ms. McCrystal had all of her Students do an assignment on the five fingers of evolution. Then she announced that the class was going on a class trip to the science museum.
The first time I played chess I lost badly. I decided to learn the rules, I practiced alone, and read about techniques to improve my strategies. After lots of practice, I played against my friend’s father and won. During the summer semester, I decided to enroll in English Composition I because I needed help to communicate in a formal and scholarly setting. During my time in Mr. Branson’s English Composition course, I grasped a better understanding of grammar, sentence structure, and writer’s perspective. I believed writing an essay was just like playing chess. I needed to know the rules, develop a strategy and use techniques to accomplish my goal of connecting with my audience and readers.
Writing this essay was difficult because I had to remember events that had occurred in the past; one of the challenges, was trying to place everything in order, and be as accurate as possible. It was also difficult for me to write about a life experience that had made a big impact in my life. I felt successful as I reflected on my story and realized I had come a long way. During this process I learned that I have to do multiple organizers to have coherent ideas. I also learned that I have to have at least three or four drafts before I let anyone else edit. I write and then change things and I do this about three or four times before I am convinced with my writing.
I had landed in the airport about three hours ago but it seemed like days since I was in the warm sunny weather of the southwest United States. I was forced here because the rest of my family had moved here. They all hated the warm weather.
It was in 2010, when I was still in Vietnam, and coming up was a very hard Transitional Exam from Secondary School to High School, which included a three-part exam: Math, English, and Literature, that all ninth graders, including myself, were very frustrated about. It was the key to open the door to a student’s dream. Because the better the high school you got into, the better education you would get, and the better preparation you would have to increase your chance to get into a great college. For that reason, every student needed to study for the exam with their best efforts.