Paúl Rosales

Writing and Rhetoric: Assignment #2

Personal Narrative
19/09/2020

My personal experience in the academia environment

“My most feared educational situation”

Have you ever been so excited about approving a course that you didn´t think
about the consequences of being so relaxed the next semester? Yes, that
happened to me.

Let me introduce myself, my name is Paul I am 19 years old and I basically ruined a
part of my life. You know, I made a mistake, I have never been so confident about
something in my entire life and that led me to a path full of depression, stress, and hate.
Having a relaxed behavior throughout a whole semester was not a great idea, in fact, it was
the worst decision I have ever made and there are three events that led me to that point.

First, the beginning of my story happened during my second semester in college. I

was told on my first semester that the professor that was going to teach me Constitutional
law on my second semester was the hardest one to approve on the hole faculty, but I had no
option to retire because of my schedule. His name was Juan Francisco and the first day of
class he told us that only the 10% of this class is going to approve the course and the 90%
of it is either going to retire or fail. He was not wrong, nobody made a sound that first class,
we were all very afraid. During the whole semester he was very strict and to be honest he is
the best professor I have ever had in my entire life, not only he taught us about
constitutional law, but also made us realize the importance of law in our daily lives. For
example, law is always present even for smaller things such as buying a candy or for big
things such as a divorce trial. I decided to be a hardworking person throughout that whole
semester, I was so nervous about thinking of the possibility of failing the class, I consider
myself to be a good student and just by thinking about this, it really made me feel
depressed.
Paúl Rosales
Writing and Rhetoric: Assignment #2
Personal Narrative
19/09/2020

Second, the most exciting moment in my entire life and the beginning of the most
tragic part of my life. The final exam of my constitutional law class was about to begin, at
the end only 8 of us made it to the final trench from about 26 students, we were all very
nervous. I killed it with my final exam at the end and off course I passed the course, only
seven of us made it and it felt so good. During the following months I was very confident, I
felt I was able to do anything. For example, I took summer classes after that semester and I
ended up with excellent grades. Also, I gained about 300 dollars working for a law firm.
Unfortunately, it all went downhill from this point, I entered to my third semester in college
and I was very confident at that point and that mentality ruined everything.

Third, the most tragic part of my life and the slowly recovery from it. Well, what
can I say, as I mentioned before the mentality I had throughout that whole semester made
me the most irresponsible person, I tried to make my assignments and exams like I knew
everything. For instance, for many of my exams I tried to study one or two hours before the
exam, with incomplete notes and barely knowing all the topics. Even-tough, I did not pass
many of my courses with less than a B, there was this one course that really ruined my
career and my life in general. I needed to take a course of civil law during my third
semester and during my exams I basically had low grades because I did not study for every
single one of them. My most feared situation happened, I failed a course and I was forced
to repeat it, I have never failed a course in my entire life, I felt broken, useless, depressed.
In the following months, my life was “miserable” but I needed to catch up with my friends
that did pass the class to not feel bad and because it was my responsibility to do it. After
almost 6 months, I am finally studying together with my classmates again and achieving
many goals while doing it. This memory really taught me a lot of things and influenced me
to grow as a better person. For example, I am not that confident anymore, even though I
should be and I am more responsible than ever. I am not saying I´m perfect, but life is hard
and if you are not a hardworking person nowadays you are not going to achieve anything
special.
Paúl Rosales
Writing and Rhetoric: Assignment #2
Personal Narrative
19/09/2020

In brief, although I made a mistake and considering all the events that happened,
starting with the all the pression that my second semester had on me, followed by all the
effort I put into other activities, this made me realize that pushing myself too much it´s
always going to end up really bad. This is not an obvious and direct lesson, this is a factual
statement, I felt miserable after that situation happened, pushing myself too much ended up
with me being very irresponsible and worn out. Nevertheless, this is what life is all about, I
need to keep pushing myself in order to be a good professional and a good person too. My
relationship with the academia in general it´s only starting, but I only have one thing in
mind and that is to hard work to achieve any future goal, growth is winning and nongrowth
is losing.