AWKWARD
When you don't quite make itBY ALEX BALLARD ON FEBRUARY 21, 2014
The silver medal. The red ribbon. A 92. The moment when you just don’t make it. You try your best to the very end just to be rewarded with disappointment. Where there is a winner, there is an “almost winner.” The person who had it in their reach but just didn’t reach far enough. Many Rose students have experienced this, whether it be losing the major role in a play or losing the final game of the season. Junior Megan Hyman experienced this firsthand when she received a 92 as her final grade for the first semester of AP Calculus AB/BC.
“I was mostly frustrated because I got a 92 for every single six weeks,” Hyman said, “But I can’t complain too much because my teacher gave us a good amount of extra credit.” Hyman stated that she was not used to struggling in math, but Calculus has been a challenge for her. “I think [I got the 92] because I’m normally pretty good at math, but with Calculus I’ve struggled to understand the concepts,” Hyman said. Hyman, however, has the opportunity to improve her grade before the year is over due to AP Calculus AB/BC being a full-year class. “I’m trying to get help during SMART Block and study more often,” Hyman said. Junior Lauryn McDowell met a similar fate when she received a 92 in Early Bird Jazz Band. “I was pretty upset and disappointed because it was one point away from an A,” McDowell said. McDowell believed that her 92 was due to her missing a lot of her Early Bird Jazz Band classes. “If we aren’t there, we get a zero for the day,” McDowell said, “I skipped a lot of those classes so I guess I had it coming.” McDowell doesn’t have the same opportunity to raise her grade like Hyman did due to Early Bird Jazz Band being only one semester long. Her 92 is going to have to stay no matter what. “I would definitely show up to class if I could do it over again,” McDowell said. To many students, a 92 may not seem so bad. It’s still a B, which is passing, but there are other students who felt the agony of defeat in another situation; college applications. One student who experienced this is Senior Ashley Norris who recently sent in an application for the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW). “I was extremely mad,” Norris said. Norris was very upset because she had always wanted to go to UNCW, and now her chances of a straight acceptance had vanished. “My parents and my sister went there and I really wanted to go there,” Norris said, “It was the one school I always wanted to go to.” In retrospect, Norris felt that she could have tried harder her first two years of high school. “[If I could go back] I would have studied harder, taken harder classes, and asked for help more than I did,” Norris said. Although Norris did not get accepted for fall semester, she did get accepted for spring semester, but she said that it was not of interest to her. “I don’t want to do that because then I’ll have to go to a community college first,” Norris said. Norris has also applied to East Carolina University, Meredith College, Appalachian State University, and University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She looked at her denial as a blessing in disguise. “After thinking about it for awhile, I realized I had other choices that are probably actually better for more than where I wanted to go in the first place,” Norris said. Despite the awkwardness of disappointment, Hyman, McDowell and Norris were able to find the positives of the situation and see it as a learning experience. The “agony of defeat” wasn’t so agonizing after all. HTML Comment Box is loading comments...
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