“I don’t recommend that you take the course.” The words of my sophomore-year language arts teacher stung as I solemnly walked away from her. All the blood, sweat, and tears that I put into her class were washed down the drain. The hours of staying up late at night to get the one point that would make or break my grade, helping my confused friends, and self-teaching. I hoped that my hard work was recognized, yet I was gravely mistaken. A week earlier, my friends and I were discussing our courses for next year when the topic of language arts classes arose. Three paths were available: Regular, Honors, and AP. While most kids choose honors, I wanted to take the highest level that my school offered: AP. After laughing at me, my friends told me to ask our teacher. In doing so, I could correctly gauge myself from an expert’s eyes. Therefore, I walked in to consult my teacher, confident in the feedback I would receive. I could not have been more wrong. While I understood that these courses were completely different in terms of rigor, I was humiliated by my teacher’s response. After moping about it for a week, I decided to take the course. I was going to succeed. I had one small hurdle though: I had no plan to switch into the course. How was I planning on succeeding if I wasn’t able to join the class, to begin with? Unbeknownst to me, I was about to be thrown the lifeline of a lifetime. One grueling Thursday in July, I was working as a researcher at Temple University. While it was interesting, it was tedious and the day could not have gone by any slower. I was starting to feel like the subject of the painting Après le Bal by Ramon Casas when my counselor suddenly called. “Congratulations Tanush Nagavelli, you have been accepted into the Honors STEM Academy at Monroe Township High School!” I was ecstatic! Inductees are selected at the beginning of sophomore year, but my academic performance made me an exception. While this seems like a completely unrelated achievement, it was a double boon. I no longer needed to toil over what courses I wanted to take every year. The strict schedule of the biomedical strand of the Honors STEM academy allowed me to take AP Language Arts. My junior year started and I regretted everything. Literature I didn’t even know existed was hurled at me. I had to decode an ancient author’s hidden meaning when he decided to make one specific boat blue. I was in a sea of words, and I could not swim. My drive to prove my former teacher wrong had now turned into a fight for survival. As the year progressed, I completed research papers, published articles, and finally understood that the blue boat meant freedom from a Communist country. I carried over my habit of working diligently and helping others, which greatly improved my social skills as well as my academic ones. By doing so, my work ethic improved exponentially as well. As the year came to a close, I felt proud of my progress and earned a respectable grade for the course given the challenges that were thrown at me. Currently, I’m on track to being inducted into the National English Honor Society. I occasionally reflect on the rejection from two years ago. Strangely, I don’t feel the shame of being shot down or the sense of pride of proving her wrong. Rather, I’m thankful for the motivation to upgrade my skills in one of my favorite subjects. She gave me a reality check. My “hard work” from sophomore year can’t even hold a candle to the effort I put into junior year. I had to compete against myself daily to remain afloat on this literary ocean, and I can finally swim.
genZindagi
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