The jump I have made from these past few weeks in Bridge, from the past four years in High School I personally believe is incredible.

I am here at the Bridge program because I portrayed a lacking effort in my academics throughout my first few years in high school because I had this thought that everything I was to complete, had to be perfect. This didn’t help me at all, even though I turned in the best projects, and the best papers; they were always deducted points for being late. It is the greatest feeling in the world to be told by a teacher in front of the entire class over and over again that your paper was the best he’s read, or your project was the best she’s ever seen; but what good does that do when I have to sit there with a C when the perfect score was crossed out? I still to this day don’t know where I got this habit of always having everything perfect, and overthinking every little thing that just threw me off in the end; regardless if I did turn in really good work, I still felt like I could of done better and the reason for that is because I know I could have finished in the time we were given.

My Junior year our school has a mandatory “Junior Research Paper” and I was so excited because we could pick our own topic, and work on it every day we class and had only a month to do it (but with my block schedule, I had this class only every other day so I’d only be working on it for half the month besides outside of class time.) “Unfortunately” my English teacher had to be out for this particular month because of a hernia and we got stuck with this substitute that was a supposable English teacher but I can guarantee you, she had never worked a day in her life with high school level English students! I don’t even know how I got through the month with this lady, but I can tell you that my paper was turned in on the day of my final exam, two months after the due date… I over analyzed the entire assignment. By giving me small due dates on when this and that were to be done by, just overwhelmed me. We had to create ten notecards and make them in this specific way with the research we found from that day, and turn them in at the end of each class period and that just wasn’t something I could do because the way I get my stuff done is by working on my own pace.

To compare from then to now, I try to just be care free towards to my work. I push myself to continue to do my best writing; but I needed a reality check that this is college and working on my own pace probably is not going to be something that will work at this level. I have completed every writing response we have been given here at the Bridge and each time I complete one, I feel like I’ve become a better writer individually and as a student. I want to make this a habit and I know by continuing to push myself knowing that I want to be here and I want to show what I can do, I have to always commit and prove myself that High School reflects nothing of my best work. I probably wouldn’t be sitting in this chair if it weren’t for the essay I submitted and two letters of recommendation from the teachers who really saw my potential.