The fall of Rome, the end of the world, and the biggest disaster since Cats – my 57.2% in AP Physics last semester. The grade that got me placed on “Academic Probation.” The grade that stressed me out for the entirety of Winter Break.

I’ve felt like a failure in my personal life countless times. When my mom asks me to make chai for her and the tea to sugar ratio is wrong — I’m a failure of a child. When no matter how hard I try, I can’t find any empathy after my friends open up about their issues — I’m a failure as a friend. In other words, I have always felt like a failure as a human, but never as a student. Instead, I relied on academic validation to make up for my feelings of inadequacy in every other aspect of my life. But AP Physics threw me entirely off that course.

I’ve been placed in “advanced” classes since middle school, so enrolling in the hardest courses available to me is my normal. I haven’t ever really struggled in science, but physics is based on my consistently worst subject: math, and more specifically, trigonometry. I can handle basic algebra, but absolutely nothing that I learned in my algebra classes could have prepared me for the work we do in physics. It also didn’t help that I took Math 120 last semester, a basic college class where we focused on probability and calculating interest on loans. We slightly covered trigonometry in my sophomore year Algebra II class, but again, that’s my weakest subject.

On top of being incredibly lost in class, AP Physics requires a lot of individual studying. Being labeled as a “gifted kid” since elementary school (when really I just have ADHD) conditioned me into being able to pass all my tests without ever needing to study. I got used to being good at things without ever needing to practice. The only time I really studied was before the end of semester exams, and even then it was never rigorous. Being in a class that required me to actually spend time trying to teach myself lessons felt so incredibly mentally exhausting.

I was also struggling with other issues in my personal life that were making it significantly more difficult to do my regular homework, nevertheless dealing with the addition of teaching myself everything in physics that I was having trouble grasping. Usually, my personal life is never consuming enough to get in the way of school, but I was starting to find myself spending more time staring at the ceiling, just thinking, than actually working.

I spent the entire night before the semester exam reading a college textbook and trying to reteach myself three units worth of content. I went into the multiple choice exam thinking I could at least get a C. My score? 8/24. I could only answer eight questions correctly out of TWENTY FOUR.

I’m not going to say I don’t regret anything, because I absolutely do regret taking the class. What I will say is that this was a reality check I needed. I’m beginning to understand that choosing the most difficult options is not always going to end up in my favor. I’m not perfect; I know – incredibly hard to believe – but I’m really not. Failures are not something to let consume and define you; instead, they’re there to learn from. A mistake, a letter grade, a percentage, doesn’t make you who you are.