Success Story of Children

Once you’ve been in school for nearly 12 years of your life you think you know all of the tricks to conquering the school year. When a problem arises you think you know the easy way out of it or the perfect way to avoid it. Some kids probably believe that as you continue on through your education these problems will just simply decrease. As a junior in high school, I’ve come to find that that assumption couldn’t be more false. High school came as a scare to me and I felt that I was the only one going through those typical teenage problems; however, after reading How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, by Paul Tough, I began to gain some of my confidence back.

I have always been a kid who has done well in school and been focused on excelling. School work is the number one priority in my household. My parents push me and my brothers hard and always encourage us to put our best foot forward. As a middle school student I figured that everyone had the same mindset as me and that everyone had parents who also motivated them. I continuously wondered why I would get a 100 on a test and the student next to me would get a 50. We had the same test, same teacher, and the same amount of time to study, so why isn’t he getting a 100? Even to this day I’m curious as to why some students continue to improve while others, unfortunately, decline. There are also those times when I can’t seem to figure out why another student did so much better on a report than I did. It is this agitation that allowed Tough’s book to really open up my eyes to a whole new learning experience. School and stress, for me, go together like a delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I tend to worry about matters that shouldn’t even be stressed upon. One of the claims Tough makes that I relate to most is that most of our stress comes from worry about things. I realize now that I’m not stressed about the actual school work I am given, but I am stressed about getting it...