Bye Bye

Paul Logan Summary

In the beginning of Paul Logan’s “Zero” essay, he discusses how his first report card from college consisted of two F’s and two I’s, and how he crumpled the report card and stuffed it in a trash can. He also continues into a depth look on how his life was like in his high school years, explaining that he had the potential but was tormented by fellow classmates. Which, then lead him to begin changing he appearance, his attitude, and over all out look on his academics.
In this essay Logan describes his struggles through high school and college and the difficult road to academic success. In high school he had an attitude that most teenagers do, which is taking social priorities over their academic studies. He had the potential to succeed, but was tormented by classmates on a daily basis. So, he began to focus more on trying to fit in and dodge the bullying he was enduring. He got a job, started to change his look, and starting dating a girl. He got a job at the mall to continue to support this new image he had created for himself. He turned into a C student instead of the over achieving student at an A. Even with his mediocre grades he still took the SAT at the end of high school and was accepted into a four year university, but his attitude and out look on life had not changed.
He then entered college and was overwhelmed with the difficulty of his classes. He tried methods and ways to get around the overwhelming feeling, but he still did not have the skills that he needed for college. He began to realize that college courses were nothing like high school classes, which he couldn’t just coast through. It became very hard for him to keep up with the course load that he obtained on a daily basis. He stopped attending class all together believing that he could do the final exams and that would keep him afloat. Then it became apparent that this was not possible. Unfortunately, he quickly went back to putting his social life before his studies. The same patterns lead him to quite all his classes and he decided to leave college.
He knew that he had let himself and his family down at this point. He started working for a warehouse called Sam’s Club as a cart attendant to support him self after leaving college. He was very disgusted in the work he had found himself doing. While at work he ran into a couple of popular students for high school he then asked them what they were up to. Hearing his families disappointment and witnessing his former classmates continue to progress, made him realize he needed to change he perspective on life. He decided to give college another go around. This time he fully involved himself in classes, school work, and even becoming a study group leader. Through this commitment to his studies and classmates he not only excelled, but became popular among his peers. Through this complete turn around he brought his GPA up from a zero point zero and graduated college with a beautiful four point zero grade point average.