High schools are not particularly a location that exude perfection. In many cases, they are the exact opposite of that. Built up from a strong foundation of alternating grey and maroon bricks, my high school in Stroudsburg stands proudly. The school is a representation of the four years encompassed in my time there. Achievements and triumphs as well as failures and downfalls occurred in that building that every student can relate to. There is one singular aspect of my class that sets it apart from the eighty graduating classes prior—our intelligence. We were the smartest class to date; our grades and test scores went unmatched, and so was the competition.
From a young age, I have maintained the notion that I am motivated—sometimes ambitious a little beyond my capabilities—but nothing more. This motivation has
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I was truly just that one grade away. At the end of junior year when I learned the results of my strenuous calculus class, I was engulfed in devastation.
You were so close. You knew it only took one B to lose it and that’s exactly what you let happen.
Yet, on some level I knew it was not truly the tragedy I was painting it to be.
It’s only high school. You’re still at the top of the class. This shouldn’t have to feel like such a failure.
The thoughts in my brain conflicted. The idealization of my grades and the concept of perfection reminded me of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In the novel, Gatsby romanticizes his past and the memories that he shared with his beloved, Daisy, five years earlier. Gatsby’s belief in her perfection is actually because of his own ideals, not who she really is. Gatsby stares at the "single green light" on Daisy's dock with longing from the house he decided to build right across the water from her. It symbolizes the "unattainable dream," the "dream [that] must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp