My junior year of high school, I failed my English Class. I hid it and did not do Summer school that year because I was ashamed to admit that I had failed. I thought I was dumb and unintelligent from that moment on. I had horrible self doubt on all my abilities. Making up that credit my senior year was so hard. But what I still do not understand to this day is why I failed. I would come in for extra help, I would work extra hard and pass with flying colors on homework and projects, but it comes to the test, I freeze.
I am a horrible test taker. I'll admit it, I work better with homework rather than quizzes and test. That is just who I am as a person. It is from the anxiety and stress of failing and becoming a disappointment to everyone that causes me to do poorly on tests/quizzes.
But I am not the only who suffers through this.
There are other people out there who are just like me with this. They cannot take tests well. The anxiety gets to them and they do poorly because the idea of failing is the only thing running through their head.
But what do schools do about this? Nothing. I only had one teacher who really helped me with my anxiety and English during High School, I was really sad because I only had her my last year.
Today people overlook the idea of anxiety saying that it is not a real illness or a distraction to learning. But in fact it is. There are countless amounts of times I have missed class because I was stressed out about something so small. On my part, missing school will cause bad grades, but I would still go in for extra help and my teacher, the who I failed with, would get frustrated with me over everything. How I was always spelling words wrong, how I could not comprehend what I had just read and summarize it, etc.
This, as a High Schooler fighting anxiety and depression, was so humiliating to me because I was being treated as I was in Primary school.
From my Senior year, thank god I was blessed with the best teacher, I was able to overcome that fear. I would go in for help whenever I could or just to talk. I was constantly studying in a way that worked for me. She helped me do a lot better on retaining information and doing a lot better on tests.
She taught me that failing was okay, and that is my philosophy I had going into college.
You are not going to pass every class with flying colors, in fact it is nearly impossible to do. If you fail a class, it DOES NOT mean you are not smart. Maybe it was how the professer taught, maybe it never clicked the way they did it.
You will never succed everything on the first try every single time. You will fail. If it is with a class, everything will be okay, it is not the end of the world. Parents, do not make your kids feel awful about failing a class. Do not say they did not try hard enough or they could of put in more time (my father did this to me), this proves to them that all the fears they had of failing were right and the trust is so much harder to build back up. They will hide stuff because they are scared to confornt you about it.
DO NOT shame anyone for failing. If anything, HELP THEM. Do not hound them into doing better, let them figure it out WITHOUT you making them feel like they are a dissapoinment in your life.
It is okay to fail. It is like the saying, you fall of a horse, you get right back on and try again.
