Early College Student Analysis

The school I currently attend is the same school I have been attending since my freshman year, Wake Early College of Health and Sciences. This school provides their students with two years of high school and two years of college. Throughout my first two years of high school, I faced many obstacles and hardships. From piles of homework to all-nighters spent preparing for the following day. Although, it wasn't until the college classes where I truly felt overwhelmed by the amount of work I was given. I felt as if I had enrolled in an entirely different, and much more difficult institution.

The staff at WECHS want their students to do the best they can. Therefore, the school structured the Juniors’ first college semester to intentionally be a light semester. This was a technique the Early College had utilized to ease the transition from high school to college classes. I confidently confronted these classes and did exceptionally well in all of them. For the next semester, we were given the freedom to determine the structure and layout of our schedule. Due to the semester that I experienced, I confidently selected 3 advanced
classes and one regular class.

Throughout that semester I was doing very well, but with all three advanced classes weighing me down, I eventually experienced a downfall. For one of the classes, my effort put in began to quickly drop. This drop was due to not understanding the material provided to me. The course was a college math class, and I had an instructor that didn’t bother to help even when asked. After my grade dropped enough to prevent me from earning transferrable credit I opened my eyes and realized that I needed to increase the effort I put in. I had a friend that was experiencing the same difficulties as me, so together we began to meet and work hard to understand the material. It was already nearing the end of the semester so the grades we had to earn seemed to be out of reach. Although with hard work and hours of studying we both ended up with transferrable credit.

Although this experience was not a total failure, I had a powerful taste of it.
At first, I was terrified of the experience because failing a class is a major fear of mine. I was hesitant to take more advanced classes in the future, but eventually, I realized that I should learn from this experience and shouldn’t fear it. I learned not to try and rush into classes and overburden myself. I learned that rushing and placing excessive burdens on oneself will lead down the path of disaster and regret. The experiences affected me by changing the way select my classes. Now, I get help and take my time to choose the best classes for that semester without overdoing it. My consequent semesters have been adequately improved in grades and in the effort I put in. Looking ahead, I will always wisely select my classes due to the phenomena I have experienced in the
past.