I was always a good student and school was always easy for me. But as I got older, school got harder and I needed help with a lot of my work. I just expected to stumble through every class and get the good grades I got in my previous years. This was wrong for me to do because I knew that I was more capable than that.
One day at the beginning of 9th grade, I stayed after school to make up a math quiz because I failed it and needed a better grade to pass. My teacher, Mr. Roach, asked me, “How did you do on your quiz?” I told him I didn’t know because I knew that I had failed and was too embarrassed to tell him. He told me that I did know, and more than that, he said that I should be getting an ‘A’ on every test in every class. This shocked me. But it also made something stand out in me. What if he was right?
Turned out, he was. When I saw that first ‘A’ on my report card it made me feel good and I wanted to do good for the rest of the year so I applied myself. For that entire year I got an ‘A’ in my class on every report card. I had never thought that was possible, and I got rewarded for it so it was just that much better.