My sister came to St. Luke's in 5th grade while I was still going to school at Fairfield Country Day School (FCDS). I ended up going there for 3 years but eventually, my parents wanted me to leave because FCDS only went through ninth grade. They thought it would be easiest if I attended school where my sister went. I loved FCDS, I made a bunch of friends and I always was super happy to go to school every day. I made some really good memories there so when I was told I was going to be leaving after fifth grade, I was crestfallen. I couldn’t believe it. FCDS seemed perfect. I didn’t even have to work extra hard to do well there. One time at the end of the year in fourth grade my teacher pulled me aside and told me I had a very bad grade and I didn’t have a lot of time to fix it. Injust a few weeks when school was ending, he told me I had an A+. I didn’t even try to do anything special, I just made sure not to slack off and I ended up with an A. 

My parents told me that I would have to take a test to get in to St. Luke’s and then I felt ok because there was no way I would get in. I got nervous the second I heard about the test because I have never taken a big test to try to get into something so I did not think I could get in at all. Unfortunately, my dad made me study with him for over two months to prepare for the big test which lasted 3 hours. Studying for so long was something I was definitely not used to and I struggled with it, a ton. When I took the test I realized that if I had to take this test to get in, then compared to the academics here,  FCDS was nothing, I was really going to have to work hard to do well.

My first real day at St. Lukes I was intimidated by many aspects of the school. The school was much bigger than FCDS and everything seemed so formal and everyone seemed so smart. The first couple weeks went by and nothing was too bad academically but I later find out that was just because it was the beginning of school. Once we started doing real work and getting real assignments is when I noticed that things got really hard. This was when I first experienced the challenge of being at a difficult school. At any school, it's hard to maintain good grades, but especially here, it was super stressful having to maintain good grades for such a long time. As the days went by in my first semester, I was always thinking about my grades. I pretty much knew everyone at this school was really smart but it was pretty frustrating to see my friends do so well with grades while mine were just mediocre. By the time the first semester was finished, I went to check my report card by myself in my room. I opened up my laptop not expecting much of anything and when I saw my grades I wasn’t happy, it wasn’t like my grades were terrible, I just knew it wasn’t the expectation I had for myself. 

The thing was that I just wasn’t used to such a challenge academically. I didn’t want to stay at the spot where I wasn’t getting the best grades I possibly could so I knew I had to work harder, use my time better, and take feedback from teachers just to overall try and do better. When it finally got to the end of my first year, I was glad I would get a fresh start for 7th grade. I knew I could do well but I would really have to apply myself, and that was sort of hard because I don’t always work hard at everything. The next year, when I got to 7th grade I was very happy with the results, compared to my last year. I did exceptionally well with my grades. I was super proud of myself for knowing what I had to work on and making the adjustment to be able to do better. This special moment in my life when I saw this big change helped me understand that not everything in life will be comfortable for me and something that I’m used to, and sometimes I will have to adjust. When you adjust and push yourself, you will always meet the expectations you have for yourself.