David Williams

Matthew Garcia

English II Honors

20 March 2019

Personal Narrative Essay

Studying has never really been my thing. While all my other classmates

were studying their multiplication tables and learning vocabulary, I was staring out

the window and not paying attention. I didn’t understand why everyone was

putting forth so much effort; all of this just came naturally.

Throughout my middle school career, the same trend continued: put forth

minimal effort and get top grades. I achieved A after A after A all without doing

any work outside of school. While all my friends were complaining about school

finally getting hard, I continued to progress through school without studying for

anything.

Three years later, middle school was almost over, and it was time for high

school class registration. Naturally, I signed up for the hardest possible schedule I

could. I was taking Chinese, Math III, AP World History, and Biology all in the

same year. My parents, friends, and even counselors advised against it, but I

thought it would be a breeze.

 Fast forward to my first day of high school. My AP World History teacher

assigns 60 pages of reading to be completed by the day of the quiz. “Why waste

my time on this?” I thought. After all, I had never studied before, and it had

worked quite well. Come the day of the quiz, I thought I was just as prepared as

anyone else in that class. I looked over the quiz after it was handed to me: ten

questions, all open-ended. “No sweat,” I thought to myself, “I’ll just figure this

out.” After confidently answering all the questions, convinced I had gotten at least

nine out of the ten questions correct, I handed in my quiz. I asked Kaylie, the girl

next to me, how she did.

“Not good, I did all the reading, but there was a few I didn’t understand.”

“Haha,” I said, “I didn’t read at all, and I’m sure I got an A!”

The next day we were handed back our now graded quiz. I looked down at

the paper that was given to me and saw something I had never seen before. “There

must be some mistake,” I whispered to myself “There’s no way I got a 25 on a

quiz.”

I looked over at Kaylie’s paper. She had an 86 circled with a smiley face

next to it.

As our teacher was handing back our quizzes, she made an announcement.

“For our first quiz as a class, I’m very pleased! Our class average was an 84.” I
was dumbfounded. I talked to her after the class had ended and asked her what

happened.

“Did you read the textbook at all?” she asked.

“Well no, but I figured the unit we were learning about was common sense.

We learned all about this in middle school.”

She replied, “In AP classes, we go much further into depth into topics.

Maybe next time you’ll do the reading and be prepared.”

The next day I asked some of my friends in other periods what they had got.

They all had suffered the same fate: low twenties and thirties. I asked them all,

“Did you read?” and they all hadn’t. I came to the conclusion that if I really wanted

to succeed academically, I couldn’t rely on talent alone; I would have to put forth

hard work as well.

The next week we had another reading quiz, and instead of cramming at the

last minute, I started reading the day we were assigned. That Friday, the day of the

quiz, I had noticed my friends seemed anxious. I asked what the cause of their

anxiety was, and they said they were worried they wouldn’t score well on this quiz.

I asked them if they had read this time, and only Laynie said she had.

The first period bell had rung, and it was time to redeem myself. As our

teacher handed out our quizzes, I was repeating the mnemonic devices I had taught
myself to remember Egyptian Pharaohs. After scanning the paper, I could already

answer most of the questions without thinking about it. “This is easy,” I thought to

myself.

The next day our quizzes were in Powerschool, and I was over the moon at

the score I had received. A perfect 100! Immediately I texted my friends and had

discovered that Laynie and I were the only people who had read and also the only

people who achieved high scores. I encouraged my other friends to read and study

the textbook as it had significantly improved my scores.

From this experience, I learned that studying and hard work can take you

much further than natural ability.