I Wish I Would Have Asked For Help

It can be said that there is no such thing as a dumb question, but sometimes it can be difficult to ask one. You may be worried about how someone will react or that they might tell someone else. Maybe you had gotten help before and you are still struggling so you feel like a failure or are somehow letting them down. I wish that I would have asked for help earlier, maybe things would have been different. By not asking for help I believe I lost out on many typical teenage opportunities and privileges, from not being able to fully participate in sports after the golf season when my grades would tank. Also losing out on the opportunity to get my driver’s permit when I turned fifteen like most of my friends were. while they were taking the drivers ed course I was attending summer school or staying after for help. By not being able to keep my grades up in school I didn’t have the privilege to go out and practice driving or to try and get my license until I was seventeen. I remember hearing from my friends about all the fun they were having while having their licenses. All the fishing trips I was missing out on during the summer plus the disc golf and mini golf matches they were having. Since I didn’t have my license and or school work completed throughout the school year I was unable to participate with my friends in their adventures. Instead I was stuck at home doing schoolwork, to me it felt like what I could only imagine how a prisoner would feel confined within the walls of a prison. But unlike a prisoner I could escape my prison on weekdays to go to school, wich to me felt like trading one cell for another. Even though I got to go see my friends and socialize, I still had the struggles and hardship of the schoolwork. Finally my true freedom of summer. but it was short lived due to the fact that I was having to take classes during the summer. While having to attend summer school I had to miss out on my U-14 Babe Ruth state tournament. I remember having to call my coach and hearing the disappointment in his voice and my teammates over me not being there because of school. Having to make that phone call on a Thursday night to my Coach, Coach Dan Escobar and listening to him get all excited and hyped up for our first game the next day to begin our start to the tournament, only to have to tell him that I had bad news. That I was not going to be able to start the tournament as their catcher and would be having to show up a day later. It was the worst feeling ever hearing his voice change when I explained this and it was very awkward going into the dugout the next day on finding out that they had lost the first game because they had to rotate people around the field because they were having to fill in my position behind the plate which messed everyone up. Thankfully we were the home team so that I could put on my gear and hide behind my mask and hopefully make some good defensive plays to be able to relieve some of the tension and disappointment that I felt was directed towards me. It was hard dissapointing so many people through my high school career, but it seemed harder for me find the courage to ask for help. I recall freshman year when I went to ask a teacher for help on one of my assignments I was struggling with. The teacher made me feel unintelligent and like I should not have been there when she looked at me and said, ” are you serious you do not know how to do this!” I wished I could have been a turtle so that I could crawl in my shell and hide. When it became the second semester of my senior year I finanally decided that I should come out of my shell and ask another teacher that I had grown to trust and to my surprise I was not made to feel ashamed after I asked and I actually got the help that I needed. There is a famous poem by Richard Lovelance where he says, ” stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bar a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take.” I now realize that my prison was not physically four walls, but my strength and ability to ask questions and for help that kept me confined.

 
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