Personal Narrative: My First AP Course

Reminiscing back to my freshman year of high school, I decided to challenge myself by taking my first AP course, Human Geography. I, along with a few other budding freshman took the course with ripened upperclassmen. I was petrified of the tempo of the class because I was used to being in classes with other newbies like myself. I began to feel myself getting lost and disengaged in the class, not participating to my fullest ability because I thought, “You’re smart Jordan; you know you can do this,” all I had to do were some simple flash cards but I did not even want to put any effort into doing it. Yet as the school year went on, I lost faith in myself because I was surrounded by students who were just as smart as I was and experienced students

I promised myself the summer of my sophomore year that I would go to infinity and beyond in my classes to make sure I did not feel insignificant and that my grades reflected that as well. I learned to take my classes more seriously even if they were not AP or Honors, which really stuck with me throughout my subsequent years of high school. I did extremely well my sophomore year which emboldened me to try out a couple of AP courses. I was confident in doing my work, which led to my being successful in the classroom to actually enjoying the course and also being cognizant of what was going on. The learning experience that I gained was to be active in the classroom; I was a shy person at first, but I broke out of my shell which helped me in class with asking questions and engaging in material. It’s quite funny when I think back to how silly I was to not invest time in myself because now I am one of the top students of my class. I feel that if I had not gone through the adversity of the situation so early, I would not be as self-assured as I am now. I know what I think about myself; I know what I want of myself in the future. I know that I am a learner who wants to strengthen myself in every aspect now, and for that I am