The doctor tells me that I’m stubborn as a bull. I will choose taking a pill every day for three weeks over a shot. If a shot is the only option then I will run, then I will kick and scream when I’m caught. I am stubborn as a bull. But it’s offensive to say that someone is stubborn, almost equal with telling someone they are ugly, or mean. It is a trait that people don’t want, and if they do have this trait then no one will tell them. Calling me stubborn is telling me that you think I am unwilling to compromise, and unagreeable. My one-track mind makes it difficult for me to form friendships, and to maintain them. I argue, and need to have things a certain way. I put my needs over others wants and choose my personal choices over relationships. Writing this, some of these may be true to myself. This is who I am, but I’m not trapped by those stereotypes of stubborn. I am unwilling to compromise my needs for others wants, and I have a one-track mind when I have a need to be met. But despite the negative words that are put together to mean stubborn, I have used this as a gift to turn my failing high school career into a success, which has sent me on the path to college and will promise me success in my future. I’m as stubborn as a bull, but that’s not a bad thing. My stubbornness is the key to my academic success.
My stubbornness was born in 2012 after a change in my personal life, bigger than what is considered normal for a teenager to go through the summer before; my life was a mess of trying to put myself back together. Anything and everything that happened to me was a distraction from school; I fell behind in my classes, I missed school often, and I didn’t have the motivation to do well or the energy to care about school. I was used to school coming easy to me, but this change in environment, new workload amount, and this new social pressure gave me a new anxiety. When I started putting myself back together to a point where I could focus on school, I realized how horrible I had started my first real academic career. Low grades, no clubs, and I had already wiped out all my school absences for the year. I had created a mess that I would spend the next three and a half years trying to make up for.
That first winter break is when I started making goals and finding ways that would help me to get my academic success back where it needed to be. I would never be the 4.0 student that I had dreamed of being, but I could make the golden tassel goal, to achieve and maintain at least a 3.5 grade point average for all four years of high school. Working hard my second semester allowed me to begin to balance out a little of my failure first semester. My goal of a golden tassel would mean that I would have to work hard for the rest of my high school career to earn and maintain a 3.5 GPA over the four years of high school. Instead of graduating with our graduation caps having a blue and orange tassel, I would have a gold one to show the hard work that I had put into those years. Not only did I accomplish a 3.5 GPA, but I took advanced and AP courses whenever they were offered. I would not allow myself to take the easy way out of school, and to earn a good grade because the class was easy, I was going to earn that grade in the hardest classes that I was offered.
I was being stubborn to the point that I was choosing my academic preferences over friendships with great people and great adventures. I had friends that I kept that supported and encourage my academic excellence, and kicked people who couldn’t find motivation to the curb. I didn’t have time for people that didn’t have time for school. My best friend, Sydney, has been at my side for 8 years, long before the stubbornness was instilled in me. She shared my will for academic excellence, and supported it through study sessions and finding us extra work to do for classes. Eight years later, 2 different cities, but she will forever be my best friend. However, it only took me a month to decide that Alex and I could not be friends. Being around Alex took my anxiety from a constant light to medium rain to a constant downpour just by the sight. She was loud, social, and a distraction. Our academic expectations were opposite. While I strived for excellence, Alex floated through high school, doing the minimum expectations to pass, and nothing more. Alex and Sydney get along great, but I cannot be a part of their friendship because I cannot be friends with someone who floats through doing the bare minimum to get by. I was better than “just enough” and I knew that if I became friends with Alex, then I would lose my motivation and stubbornness to obtain my goal. If I just floated by doing the bare minimum like Alex, I know that the possibility that I would have graduated or even attended after my 18th birthday would have been close to none.
I sacrificed a lot of adventures in my life to fear because I was too busy in my world of academics to experience a life and adventures outside the safety of my books. While my boyfriend went skydiving, I watched from the ground and calculated how far up he was and how fast he would fall. When Sydney went cliff diving I sat at the top of the cliff with my book and watched her jump. When my sister went to football games, I would sit at home with my chemistry in hand. When my friends would go play sports, I would go to their games and sit in athletic stands taking notes on World War II. When Halloween came around and my friends went to Haunted houses, I would stay home and learn about Day of the Dead or take notes on Halloween History. I didn’t see a single movie in theatres in my high school career, instead I sat at home with Physics. I made a lot of sacrifices in high school for my grades and to learn information and master my classes. I missed out on a lot because I was stubborn, but being stubborn and saying no to these events are the reason that I could graduate with a golden tassel and achieve my goal.
Being stubborn calmed my anxiety by giving me something I could focus on and control. Stubbornness gave me an option to find what was important to me and the ability to focus all my energy into the success of that one goal. Many people in high school thought I was boring because all I did was school work, and I was the resource that all the kids that didn’t do homework tried to use. I was unagreeable because I wouldn’t always share the answers that I spent hours getting with kids that didn’t put the effort into doing any of the problems I formed study groups with the kids that were applying to Princeton, and Yale, kids that received a 34 or higher on their first take of the ACT. I knew that I would never be able to apply to Princeton or Yale, but my stubbornness assured me that I could be just as good as them if we had subtracted those 3 months of my life. If those three months had never happened, or I had been able to pull myself through sooner, I know that I would have gotten a 4.0 and the opportunity to apply to places like Yale, just like my best friend Sydney did. Other than that first semester we received the same approximate grades, similar scores on the ACT and took the same advanced and AP courses.
I’m stubborn as a bull, but that’s OK. Being stubborn is the reason I can be where I am today academically. I am stubborn enough to know that I deserve the best. The reason I have an option for college, and a will for furthering my education. This is the reason I have the ability to apply for scholarships, and can say that “I earned” a scholarship instead of “I won.” Being stubborn is the reason I achieved my golden tassel goal in high school, and I am proud to be stubborn because it was truly the key to getting me to the place that I am today. I didn’t win anything and I wasn’t handed anything in life, I earned the place that I am today, because I am stubborn and have the will to achieve something great. I will continue to be stubborn, because without my stubbornness, I would never have made it to the place I am in life today. I may be unwilling to compromise, boring, unadventurous, unagreeable, but I promise that I am going places because I am stubborn.
