The high school that I attend is a STEM School. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. At the Dayton Regional STEM School, Chinese is a required class that all students must earn at least 3 credits in by graduation. Before entering the tenth grade I had already taken two years of Chinese and had become entranced by the pure beauty and challenge of the language. Starting at the end of ninth grade, I decided that I wanted to take an advanced College Credit Chinese class in the tenth grade though the school’s Duel Enrollment Program (DEP) which is in partnership with Wright State University. If you attend this class, you have the ability to earn College Credit for Language.

 

Wright State has a teacher of theirs teaching at our school, and if we wish to take a DEP/College Credit Plus (CC+) Chinese class it is required that we take a twelve hour college entrance language test and earn at the very least the lowest passing score. Which I did. I receive the lowest possible passing score on the test and scraped my way into the DEP/CC+ Chinese class. Then there was a series of pre-year online study over the vocabulary we had to complete which we would be studying more in depth once we were in the class. Before we were finally allowed to remain in the class, each day for the first few weeks we had to take a test over each of the lists of Chinese vocabulary that we had studied over the summer. The final grade would be compiled and the grade would determine if we would remain. Fortunately enough for me, the class requirements were met and the teacher curved the grades of the whole class.

 

Once it was determined that I would stay in the class I finally began to see the heavy load of work that would be put on us if we remained. Many of the other students who originally entered the class dropped out but I remained, undeterred.

 

Soon after I began in her class my sleep and energy levels suffered, and although it was my favorite class, and I was learning a beautiful subject, I felt tired and emotionally distraught every time I went to class. I was always trying to catch up on past work, and not just for the DEP Chinese class. I was doing what I wanted and I was completely unhappy with the way I was living in a world where I was playing catch up every night and always in advisory.

 

I was on an IEP with a learning disability when I took all this on. The reason that I was able to keep up like I did was because I am also classified gifted, and can find new ways to approach a situation if I find it getting hard.

 

My grades maintained an F status for almost the whole first quarter and then jumped to an A at the end. I had been working on fixing my grades for several weeks and for the very first time in my life, I received straight A’s. In truth though, it wasn’t worth the emotional stress.

 

The second quarter I floundered. All the motivation that I had put into my grades the first quarter was gone, and I became even more of a stressed out, emotional wreak. While I still would not accept an F in any of my classes, I got nowhere near straight A’s. I had one C with A’s and B’s spread about at the end of the second quarter. I knew that I would not be able to stay afloat the two remaining quarters if I remained in DEP Chinese. I realized that being in such a high stress class was not only dangerous to my grades, but it was also bad for my health.

 

Just before the second quarter ended, I talked to my DEP Chinese instructor and my High School Guidance Counselor. If I were to leave the class at any time during the second quarter, it would be after the date by which you could drop out of a class and receive no penalty. That means that I had to leave after First Semester was over because it would be considered as taking only one semester of a college class which was perfectly acceptable.

 

The reason that I didn’t ask for help sooner was that I have a slight issue of pride. I pride myself over being able to take on huge responsibilities and being able to complete them well. I was so scared of having to admit that I have problems accomplishing certain things that I tried to ignore the issues I was facing, trying to tell myself that it was only for one year.

 

In the end I realized that I am only human, and I shouldn’t take on more than I can handle and now consider it one of my greatest strengths yet.