Anthony Rocci

4/10/18 Pd. 4

Mr. Long

When I applied to universities, my high school reported my GPA at a 2.7. An average

struggling to climb the peaks of B marks, this represents not my failure, but my surrender. About

halfway through my high school career, I gave up in school, giving just enough effort to pass, but

never enough to succeed.

While this 2.7 represents my apathy, I feel that the 3.1 I held over my 4 years is a much

better effigy for my intelligence, since my time as a Freshman was my favorite academic year. That

year I had the privilege to attend both Computer Programming 1 and 2, the extent of coding

courses offered at Merced High. I had surpassed the entirety of my Computer Programming 1

class, self-learning all of their curriculum through homeschooling years before. Because of this,

Mr. Gaestel allowed me to pass along to the second course, a much more rigorous class that tested

my intelligence. Coding is my passion, and because of that, I feel that the 4 year average is much

more telling of my efforts, not my apathy.

This lack of drive for school was born from my sophomore year. That year my mother

passed to Leukemia, and I lost a parent as well as a mentor. My mother had homeschooled my

brother, sister and I from 2011 to 2014, from 5th grade to freshman year. She was a massive part of

my academic life, and when she left I had no one to push me to succeed. I was generally

unenergetic in class, and it didn’t help that the concepts of sophomore year far exceeded those of

the year prior. These factors combined with the lack of computer science courses available led me
to academic depression. I was really unhappy in life, but I didn’t feel like learning was important to

me anymore, and my grades felt that emotional shift just as much as my self.

I was always an advanced student. Through my middle school life I never got any grade

lower than a B, so it was a shock when, through the social shift into freshman year, my Integreated

Math 2 grade fell to a C nearly 75% of the way through the schoolyear. This shock burned me, and

I worked tremendously to raise the grade, finally acing the course final. I ended that year with a B

and a hope for success in the future, however the latter would soon be challenged. After that year,

the shock of a C became much less painful. I had sustained 2 C’s my sophomore year, one even

decaying to an F by the very end of the first semester with a botched midterm paper. I was

desisitized to the feeling of failure, and my grades spiralled into failure. I went from a 3.6 to a 3.1

in that year, and from that 3.1 to an even lower 2.7 the year after that. I’ve still had yet to pass a

history course on this campus, getting by with summer school packets that ate up my time instead

of hikes in the mountains and afternoons with friends.

If I could ever retake one course, it would have to be one of those history courses,

however I simply can’t decide which. My sophomore history class was taught by Mr. Dibblee, a

wonderful man who would later disappear from the classroom, a fact later corroborated by the

announcement that his cancer had left remission. I was in the last class he taught, and I still

couldn’t find the energy to write a single page over the winter break that would doom me to my

first F. At the same time, I feel that succeeding in AP US History the year following would have

given me many opportunities now. While I feel sad for slacking on Mr. Dibblee, passing the

APUSH test would have given me much better leverage in my applications to university, and an A

in an AP course would certainly have risen my GPA above the threshhold to apply for FAFSA.
This course was essential in my failure, and ultimately killed my chances of going straight to

university.

While it may seem that I failed through high school, drifting along on calm winds of a B

average, I think that doing mediocre is still better than just dropping out. I am proud that I stuck

through all of the adversity, and will be attending the graduation ceremony, walking with a 96%

attendance record no less. While I may have lacked, everybody has rough times, and now that

they’re past, I have the chance to succeed in college and make something out of the rest of my life,

all thanks to these experiences at MHS.