Growing up I had to struggle with my learning disabilities add to that having to learn a whole new language it made my life a challenge that I had to overcome , as well as learning from the many failures that came with it. Imagine sitting in a classroom listening to a teacher talk about verbs, pronouns and action verbs, but the only thing you know it that you don’t seem to understand a word that she is saying. Being a Hispanic female means that the first language I learned was spanish, my family all spoke spanish and so did the people around me.
When I was nine years old my mother was told that I need extra help in school because I had a learning disability. I didn’t understand thing as fast as others and I would confuse many words around. Furthermore, she was told that I was going to be place in study skills, a special education class. A class where I was to get extra help on assignment, class work, homework and ask question on things I didn’t understand, but because of the language barrier between my teachers and I it was still extremely hard for me to explain what I didn’t understand, if it wasn’t everything!
I would come home everyday after school and cry because I knew I was already falling behind other kids. Feeling like I was failing myself and the people I cared about made it even worse. This affected me dearly, I became so depressed to the point that I didn’t want to go back to school. Thus, I ended up having to repeat the same grade once again. Having to repeat the same year again wasn’t something I was proud of.
Therefore, I decide that I had to work twice or three times as much as other kids in my grade just to earn a decent grade. My failures taught me that sometimes we have to give up friend, family, and my spare times to work on homework and study extra for all of my class. I came home everyday to look at my notes and study with my sister for hours until I was sure I knew what I was doing. I learned that having a disability doesn’t make me any less smarter than other people. Soon after, I learned how to speak, write and read English.
Because of all of the effort I put into learning soon after, I was mastering all of my class. Getting Student of the Month three times in a row, most outstanding student, as well as most improved student. I liked earning all of this awards because it told me that my hard work did pay off. When I finally went into High School I decided it was time to drop out of Study Skills because I knew I was ready to do school all on my own. Although, my failures I had were academic, I still learned so much from them.
For example, never to give up hope in myself and never to degrade myself because I don’t understand things as fast as other. Throughout it all I learned that giving up some things you like in order to do something right will only lead you to success. To this point in life I still work twice as hard as most people because of my learning disability. But my rewards are my A’s in my class. Because of my first failure in school, I now know that in order to succeed one must sometimes give up something, but in the long run it will be worth it.