There is No Such Thing as Perfect

This was my dad’s reply in eighth grade when I asked him why he didn’t look at my report card, but asked to look at my brothers and sisters.

“I assumed you got all A’s.”

I looked at him and replied, “What if I didn’t?”

“Madison, I know you did. That’s who you are.”

I don’t learn easily. For some people, things just come to them as for me I have to take 20 minutes to understand something that a person can take in 5. The way I see it, a person has to try really hard if they want to accomplish something.

It’s easier for my twin brother to do things being the fact he's much quicker at grasping and learning things than I am. He seems to understand things a lot more easier than I do. When we have a test in school, he doesn’t have to study as hard as I do, and we will still get the same grade.  

I learned that a long time ago, though. It taught me to work as hard as I do now. It puts the words in my head that everything has to be an A or else it’s not okay. I maybe lucky to have this mindset, because it does cause me to achieve things and work really hard. While at the same time it could be because of my competitive nature towards my brother. At least that could have been what I was thinking at first and I just got used to it.

Since I have been doing this since the 3rd grade, I knew I was able to achieve the things I wanted to if I worked extremely hard, and that’s what I did. In 6th grade I had this really strict teacher named Mrs. Donovan. I was always terrified to let her see me do anything wrong. One time she was walking around checking all the students home work. I overheard her tell other kids you should’ve done this or why would you put that?

Then she came to my table. She looks at my homework and says, “You know I always get so excited to come over and see what you did. It’s just always perfect.”

I look at her not knowing exactly what to say and said with a little laugh, “Thank you.”

She then replied, “I just wanted to make sure you knew that.” and walked away.

I’m not going to lie there were times where she made a strict comment at me, and maybe thats why I was so desperate to please her. Every year I think I’m going to lose this quality and I have to work as hard as I can because I know it’s going to get harder, but I never do. Although, every year I tend to stress more and more about things than I did the year before. There are some kids who just give up after it gets to hard. People don’t realize that life has to be hard for them to understand it. That’s the way I see it and I think others do as well.          

Starting freshman year, I moved to Philadelphia where a lot of things changed. My family had some financial issues which forced me to get a job which only added more stress. One thing I realized is that you can’t use work as an excuse in school, but you also can’t use school as an excuse at work either. Teachers and managers don’t understand that. After a long day at school one day I had work right after, but I also had a lot of homework that day. It wasn’t that busy so I figured to start my home work. Next thing I know my manager comes up and says, “Hey Madison why don’t we do something work related.”

I turned around and looked at him kind of scared saying, “Oh sorry, I just had a lot of homework and figured to get started on it since we weren’t busy.”

He replied, “Okay well you can do that later, and right now you can put the returns away.”

I answered with, “Right. I’m sorry. I’ll go do that now.”

Both school and work are hard to struggle especially when you have 2 essays to write, algebra homework, spanish homework, and you get home at 8:00 that day. That causes a lot of anxiety because people need sleep, and it took me a little time to learn that. Life would be a lot easier if you got paid for going to school. It’s something you know will never happen, but can’t help but think about it. If we got paid for going to school I think people would try a lot harder than they actually do. There are a lot of students who don’t try hard. If you fall behind it’s hard to catch up, but I think at one point or another everyone does.

I know I’m scared to ask for an extension on a project because I think I would be asking for too much. I never have work in late. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t do an assignment. In my opinion when I don’t do an assignment I know I’m affecting the direction my life is going. It’s so easy for a person to just become homeless the second they get out of high school, move out, and start their own life. There are so many things stopping people from achieving what they want to achieve, but the question is how it can be solved? How do you make enough time to juggle work and school, and then also try to get everything done. There are also times when people just need a break and to just take a deep breath. It’s a way of life you know. Having to work so hard, having a lot of stress, and not getting a lot of sleep. I think it’s set up this way because in life you need pain. Without pain you will never learn, and you learn something new everyday.