A lesson learned

This is an essay that my cousin helped me to brainstorm about.

Another test was passed back and a round of groans went up from many my classmates. I hadn’t done very well on this test either, barely getting a B on it. This was the third test this year and still no one had been able to get higher than a 90% on them. This was the average life of a student taking Calculus I at Mountain Vista Governor’s School. Although we were supposed to be the brightest students out of all of our schools, we were still getting average grades. Something needed to be done.
Many of the students thought that it wasn’t enough to simply go to class and listen to the teacher. I, at first as a joke, suggested that we all meet up at my house to attempt to teach ourselves. Many of the students actually agreed, completely seriously, so my address was distributed among the students and that weekend, I was surprised to see a large group of my peers outside my front door. I hadn’t expected so many people to show up, but I assumed that everyone wanted a good grade and was going to do everything in their power to achieve that.
We started slowly, reviewing the basic things like the definition of a derivative and the power rule, but as the weeks continued, we were able to learn much more in the same amount of time. Some of us learned better by hearing exactly how each concept went, other people learned better by reading the material out loud to themselves, so we tried putting those people together. Other people learned the material better by writing it out, so we provided much paper for them. By taking advantage of the learning strengths of each of the students, we were able to really understand Calculus better.
In the weeks that followed, the people who had come to the study groups weren’t groaning at their grades, but were looking happy. Even I saw many tests coming back with high A’s! Many weeks passed and the AP tests approached. The students in the class who had not come to the study sessions were beginning to panic and were doing last minute studying, but those who were in the study group felt confident in their abilities to pass the exam.
Towards the end of July, when AP scores came out, the Governor’s School students shared their scores with each other and there was a large difference between the scores of those who had gone to the study group and those who hadn’t. Most of the students who had gone to the study group had managed to get at least a 4 on the exam, while many of those who hadn’t participated in the study group had barely pulled off 3’s. From that experience, I realized that sometimes, going alone wasn’t always the way to go. Sometimes collaboration could be much better than being independent. Even a challenging class like Calculus was overcome through collaboration, and that experience made this lesson clear to me. The following year of Governor’s School, we were already planning to meet again at my house for the study group.

I'm sure it's not that good because I'm not the best writer, so I would love constructive criticism.

-Sam Rho