English 10










Jacobs

The autumn leaves changed color as the days became shorter in the fall of 2008. It was the first year of middle school for me, the 6th grade. I was so nervous about whether I was going to do well that year! How was I going to do well in school based on my past history of not doing homework?

This entire thing started at the beginning of the year. It couldn’t have gone any other way. I had little ambition towards my education and lacked the responsibility to do every homework assignments in my classes. Maybe, just maybe I didn’t feel like school was right for me at the time. Now don’t get me wrong, there were a couple things I liked about school. One was I liked a few classes. The other was, I liked being around friends, but just being in school for a little over 6 hours a day wasn’t doing me any good. Although I didn’t like school, I never skipped classes or school for that matter.

The two classes I didn’t like that year were English and Math. Now, one thing’s for sure that I know about me and English class is, I’m not good at poetry and free writing. In the 6th grade I didn’t get it at all. I didn’t even try my hardest to learn. I just didn’t care. There would be a certain time that I would do the work for a few weeks, other times I just handed my work in late. I may have thought that it was stress, combined with trying to get into the social class transitioning from elementary to middle school.

In the course of the year I had gotten myself into trouble, more than once. One time that year my intention was to be funny. I had pushed a guy off the bench and he hit his head and got upset. I remember fondly what happened next, because it was pure adrenaline. He came next to me and punched me in the side of the head, and then I started whaling pound after pound on him at least 6 times. Then the two of us stopped it and our gym teacher had us explain what had happened. Then, the VP questioned us in his office, let us go and told us our consequences on the following Monday. To this day I still don’t know why the other kid didn’t get a punishment.

Now, my experience was that in the 6th grade I didn’t do most of my homework, and that it just led me towards a troubled path, and the thing that I learned from my mistakes was you can’t succeed in life if you don’t take the responsibility. As for now, I’m doing much better in school because I took the initiative and the responsibility to do real well after 6th grade. I bumped my grade throughout 7th, 8th, and most of 9th grade. I also became good friends with the kid I got into a fight with, and I guess that taking responsibility for your actions is the key to a good and happy future.