Motivation and Confidence: Key to Academic Success

Students come across many complications during their school career. Some students are actually smart but just don’t apply themselves, or even have hardships that are going on in their lives. These can be fixed if you can find motivation and confidence. In the story “Zero,” Paul Logan coasts through high school and college. Logan doesn’t know the tools to succeed in school, which causes his grades to fall. In the story “The Jacket,” Gary Soto explains how the way you dress influences how you feel about yourself. Which in this case him getting an ugly jacket; which causes him to be depressed and his grades to fall. Albeit Logan and Soto went through similar hardships, they both succeed with motivation and confidence. In “Zero,” Logan wanted

He wanted a nice biker jacket but his mom got him an ugly oversized jacket. Soto’s mother was poor and got him a jacket that will last for years. Soto was bullied countless times and he became extremely depressed and started to not do well in his classes. Soto states “Although they didn’t say out loud,” Man, that’s ugly,” I heard the buzz-buzz of gossip and even laughter that I knew was meant for me. And so I went, in my guacamole jacket. So embarrassed, so hurt, I couldn’t even do my homework” (“The Jacket” 36). I could genuinely relate to this because from sophomore to junior year I had serve acne and I would feel very depressed. As my insecurity built up, and I wouldn’t feel confident at all because there was a great amount of acne on my face it was unbearable. These were the thoughts in my head. But, in reality it wasn’t bad at all. It may be bad but not incredibly terrible. Soto felt the same way because he thought people were making fun of him or saying that’s an ugly jacket but in reality the people weren’t saying anything he just thinks they are talking about his jacket. Just like my acne and me I felt the same way, and I felt that everyone was starring at my acne and that people were going to say ”Oh my god, you have so much pimples” which some people said to me and that got me depressed. At the time was seeing a girl and it made me feel like why did she like me with all this acne on

He later worked at Sam’s Club; pushing carts and became a fulltime worker. As he was working he saw his old classmates from high school. They were on their way to being successful, while Logan was pushing carts at Sam’s Club. This made him realize that he didn’t want to push carts but to be successful in life. Logan states “Coasting wasn’t going to carry me any further. Neither would CD’s, the parties, or the brand name sneakers, I’d so valued in high school. By pursuing them and nothing else, I’d closed doors in my life” (“Zero” 51). Most students can relate because as teenagers we tend to not care for school but rather care for what we are wearing and what’s going on in social media. We also like to party and hang out with friends rather than to study for classes. I can relate to this because in high school I would just coast through school and not care for my grades. I would hang out with my friends and do stuff until its really late. I wouldn’t do well in class because I was too busy doing stuff with my friends. My mother always dislikes what I would do. She would always get furious when the report card would come because she knew I would have bad grades. She would tell me to do well in school and that would make her proud. The second semester of my sophomore year I would try to get better grades to make my mom proud because It would hurt her feeling when I get terrible grades. So, I made a plan and set