Tough

In school we all try things that we may not like for me, I tried taking AP classes in my sophomore and Junior years. But it resulted in me dropping classes because I really was not good at doing the curriculum. I like to compete in anything that I do so when I heard that some of my friends were taking AP classes I wanted to as well because I wanted to be able to compete and further my education. But when I found out that there was summer work that would need to be done, I had already kind of checked out because I really did not feel like wasting my time to do the curriculum for those classes. I had gone the rest of the year that I had attempted to take AP classes and the year after without attempting to take part in another class that was advanced. I had even exceeded my expectations because I had honors in all semesters to that point. I was extremely happy to myself that I had been able to hit that mark in all of my classes and I had started building confidence. So the end of Junior year hit and we had to pick our classes for the next school year. I knew that I wanted to have the senior privileges because I wanted to be able to be at school less without being marked tardy or absent. Also, I had to be mindful that our school imposed a rule that our athletes have to pass at least 5 classes to be eligible to play, so I had to make sure that I got the classes that were absolutely necessary to be able to graduate. At the same time I did not want to take easy classes because I still wanted to learn, also I did not want to take classes that were too tough. So I configured my schedule to what I believed I wanted. I went that whole summer not really thinking about my schedule or what the classes I selected. Thinking about college and my final decision to attend Thomas College in Waterville, I went to guidance the week before school started and wanted to see if there were any classes that I should take to be able to maybe earn a college credit or two so I can get ahead of the game. I left that day enrolled in two dual enrollment classes to obtain two college credits. When I started the classes I was like “oh, I am probably not going to be able to do very good” or so I had thought. In the beginning that statement was true, as I was passing, but I was not doing as well as I normally had been so that being said I re-thought my routines and rebuilt the way I did some things, not expecting to do well. By the end of the semester I felt extremely confident in my ability to do the curriculum in those two dual enrollment classes. I had completely not expected to do nearly as well as I had. Then I found out that I had honors yet again.

The movie that I can relate this story to Ratatouille. In Ratatouille, it begins with a chef that really is not the best and really needs to improve but along comes a rat and everybody expects that he knows absolutely nothing about cooking because, after all he is just a rat right? Well it turns out that the rat actually can cook and has an extremely keen sense of what different dishes need in order to make it work. I know right, you are probably thinking how can he relate to a rat that can cook. Well if you think about it most things are like that, especially in school, I say this because just like the cook we were all bad at something in every subject. Then there is someone who understands the topic perfectly and has no problem with the work, so it can seem like you can not do it. The chef in that movie had a bad cooking experience in the beginning of the movie and so he had stopped cooking, but then he met the rat to help him. I connect with this because I think of it as like I was cooking, the more you cook something you would think the better you would be able to cook it right? So that is what I did I started working on my classes more and eventually was able to do it well.

Photo by Shawn Harquail on Foter.com / CC BY-NC