Becoming a Student

Last year, or by the end of the 2008-2009 Saint Ignatius College Prep schoolyear was a year in which I gained a true understanding of how to be a student. During my freshman year,   held at Lyons Township High School, a local public high school, I never truly committed myself to my schoolwork. As each night, I would play video games religiously, seeing no reason not to, while my grades remained at a substantial level. Lyons Township nurtured a sense of not caring about school. But a year later, as I transferred to Saint Ignatius College Prep, the same lifestyle did not apply. Giving minimal effort towards homework or schoolwork outside of school proved to be severely detrimental. Towards the latter end of my Sophomore year last year showed similarities to my Freshman lifestyle, where as a hobby, I would write, and express myself, feeling good and gratified, possibly even intelligent. Then I adopted a new maxim for life; "If you can't beat them, join them". This thought came about as Ignatius students began calling each other 'intelligent' purely due to grades. I could not stress enough to the pretentious Ignatian girl in my English class how little relevance intelligence and grades share. I then finally realized that whether I like it or not, people will always perceive grades to correlate to one's level of intelligence. So after having this revelatory understanding over this past Summer, no matter how eloquent I am, no matter how articulate and perceptive I can be, people will always expect you to have good grades, and by learning this, I began to understand that if one wishes to succeed in school, one must have the ambition, desire, and even wherewithall, to put down the Xbox 360 controller during school nights, no matter what.

Written 8.23.09