Forcing Myself Academically

    When I was growing up, I was moderately talented in athletics. Both my parents were born in Vietnam, meaning that they both had very strong legs due the primary transportation in their era was simply walking. My father had done professional kickboxing and taught me kung fu for the vast majority of my life. I was essentially built to be athletic at a very young age. However, a magnitude of reasons for me to thrive and excel in school is what made me force myself to shape and molded myself into the way I am today. 

    In elementary school, I was mostly known as the dumb kid in class. I was talented in athletics but the branding of being the dumbest kid in class overshadowed the things that I was gifted in. During those early school years, I had to take summer school in 3rd and 4h grades because of how dumb I was. I even had to take an "RTI" class instead of being placed in the normal class with everyone else. I was behind, ashamed, and unintelligent. I didn't know anything, know how to study, or knew how to get good grades. For most of my years in elementary school, I was ok with this fact. I didn't have much care for school. 

    When reaching 5th grade, I had a pretty major crush on a certain girl in my class. You can probably see where this is going. There was a moment when I had shown the entire class how dumb I was. Then I say that the girl I had a crush on laughed at how stupid I was. This was one of the big reasons why I didn't want to be labeled a dumbass. One of the other reasons why I started taking school seriously is when my Asian parents kept on pushing me to get good grades. Always punishing and expressing their deep disappointment if I didn't meet their standards. There were some of the reasons why I wanted to start improving my intelligence. 

    When middle school rolled around I didn't have the greatest grades in 6th grade. Though I had the determination and heart to start improving. During the summer and week-long breaks, I would review notes, rewrite notes so that I would force myself to remember them, and study math and English at khan academy. I would even go as far as trying to improve my memory by using Lumosity (a website that uses games so that people can improve their brain functions, one of them was memory). I searched videos on Youtube on how to have better grades. I used apps like Myhomework and planners so that I can track and organize what I needed to do. During this journey to become smarter I also learned the different ways people effectively learn. Some learn best from reading, being audibly told, or using their hands to learn a particular subject. I had forced myself to be able to effectively learn in all three of these ways. Usually, people just focus and excel at one way of learning. I learned and used every single trick in the book to get good grades that I eventually got the good grades I desired (straight A's). 

    Looking back at the journey I had taken, I see that to achieve the things that you truly desire, you need to sacrifice the gifts that god had given you. Of course, people that are extremely gifted and talented should pursue them because they can greatly excel at them. However, for people like me, it's just a matter of sacrifice. When I hear that people want to have good grades I always think to myself, have they tried every trick that existed to get those grades? How did a dumbass from elementary and middle school surpass you in every single subject? If you want to have good grades, you need to ask yourself are you willing to do any and everything to get them? Are you willing to sacrifice the things you love to get the things you desire? It just frustrated me that people want these things but don't want to put in the effort and sacrifice for thises things. Though I understand because they don't have all the necessary reasons to justify the sacrifice. While I do have those reasons. I wanted to stop being a dumbass and worked hard. My journey is the product of working hard and it pains me to see people using the characteristic "hard worker" when they don't even have the tiniest proof that they are a "hard worker".

Link to the app I use for a planner (Myhomework): https://myhomeworkapp.com/home