Nick Zhang

Composition Writing
“A fool in need of attention”, would be the most accurate statement describing me during
8 grade. I was a loud and obnoxious, egotistic, and arrogant kid who didn’t have many goals
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academic-wise in my first year of high school, and the few things I felt truly passionate about
doing involved playing games and sports. To me, playing sports was also a way to relieve stress
as playing and talking to friends would help liven up the most boring of days. During class, my
attention span was noticeably short. So very few topics really grabbed my attention and kept me
learning. Whenever I wasn’t paying attention, I was either playing games, talking with friends, or
wasting time fiddling with small objects such as fidget toys. Fortunately, however, the
consequences of not paying attention in class at the time compared to the present are vastly
different. As well as teachers acknowledging that grade 8 students were still adapting to the
brand-new learning environment caused by factors such as intaking much more complicated
information, larger projects, and harsh final assessments. Other than English class, which was the
absolute worst. Every other subject was smooth sailing for me. English class somehow always
manage to make time feel as if it was slowing down to a snail’s pace, along with requirement to
memorize an almost, infinite number of terms, just didn’t work out for me. And don’t even get
me started on presentations, stage-fright always struck me like a bomb from WW2 that would
give soldiers shellshock. Whenever I was required to present anything in front of the class, I
could barely keep myself from shaking as I was unable to contain the fear I felt. The anxiety
itself is my fault to be honest as it has nothing to do with the class itself. However, the fact that
the class required so many in-front-of-class presentations really annoyed me being another
leading factor for why I hated the class. Don’t get me wrong, Ms. Stiensen was a nice, funny,
and helpful teacher, but her learning curriculum was just awful, utterly terrible, in my opinion at
least.
Days swiftly went by like the wind as we approached summer break and the school year
came to end. A few days before the school year ended, I made a friend what I believed was a
false promise about joining the IB program, one of the hardest, if not the hardest course someone
could take in high school, then proceeded to never give it any more thought.
Then came grade 9, after the slowest summer break I’ve ever experience due to the
pandemic, 9th grade itself was surprisingly the easiest year to succeed and pass as a lot of the
workload was diminished to collaborate with the new online studying habits. I was quite
successful in becoming a much calmer person as it just came to me naturally, sort of like
puberty, except I still don’t know whether I’ve passed that phase or not. However, the
inconsistent balance between my new calmer self and my grade 9 personality was clearly visible
through the difference in how I acted in front of close friends and family compared to others. In
front of my friends, I would sometimes act stupid or crazy but wouldn’t show that side of myself
in front of others. During this time, my target was to focus and pay more attention in school as
well as achieve grades that surpassed what I got in 8th grade that could make me proud, which
Nick Zhang

wasn’t hard to achieve at all. And as the people around me began to mature, I did so to. At a
much slower pace that is. My friends had also set higher goals for themselves academically as
well and were all much brighter than me by passing multiple courses (that was usually math) and
skipping a grade ahead which irritated me the most. This prompted my realization that education
is much more beneficial than I had first believed it to be, and so I started working harder in
school, to the best of my abilities at least. As I began to work harder in school, my grades had
also made a reasonable improvement as I went from a solid mid range B student in8th grade, to a
modest, hard working A student in grade 9. These good grades made both me and my parents
extremely happy, but there was also this unsettling thing about these “good grades” that really
bothered me. The real cause of my uncertainty was the numbers hidden behind the letters as most
of the A’s I received ranged around 86-90% usually averaging around 88%, which made me
uneasy. Although I received relatively good grades compared to some of the other students, the
percentages were a bit lower than I had anticipated to receive to make me truly proud of my
improvement, since what I was expecting were grades around the 90-95% mark. And so, yet
another summer flew by as I wasted it away playing games and watching anime.
Finally came 10th grade. Personality-wise, I had reached the maturity level I was hoping
to achieve in 9th grade by finally managing to seem my age group, excluding the height factor.
As well improved my working and learning habits by a bunch, with a few issues such as,
demotivation and procrastination which I had inherited from who knows where. During the first
semester, my grades haven’t improved by any significant amount compared to the previous year
caused mainly by my negative learning habits. But after hearing about Semiahmoo’s I.B program
again after 2 years, I gave it some through. As I did my research and applied myself to the
program, I waited, for weeks constantly thinking about whether or not I would be accepted due
to the relatively ok grades I received in the previous year. Finally, after 2 whole months, I
received the acceptance letter offering me a spot in the IB program, however, due to
complications I had to bike to Semi multiple times to reinstate my acceptance multiple times.
This was because the acceptance letter wanted confirmation from the students by replying back
to the sender, which would be read off and confirmed. However, my dumbass thought that they
would respond to every letter sent back to them which made me so anxious, that I had to bike to
Semi to finalize and confirm the answer.
As of the current time, I am once again, attempting to fix up my bad learning habits
which seemed to have taken me over completely, as if I can successfully find motivation and the
keenness to PREcrastinate instead, I would be able to achieve grades that I don’t even believe are
possible for me. By rebuilding my learning habits, I am finding joy in learning in classes that I
once found boring and time-consuming such as French, Socials, and English class. And as the
school year continues, I will probably receive much more complicated assignments and projects
that will really test my learning habits to see if they had improved or not. This applies to summer
school as well, a course I will be taking through the month of July as I hope that all these courses
and factors can improve my habits as I prepare myself for the infamously rigorous IB program.