Remolona 1

Jake Remolona

Benedetti

UWP 01

The Failure to Fail

My relationship with reading has always been one of many highs and many lows. Ever

since I was a young boy, I heavily immersed myself in works such as: The Percy Jackson Series,

A Series of Unfortunate Events, and the famous Harry Potter series. These novels offered me an

escape from reality; they allowed me to dive into an adventure where I was the main character.

Back then, I read to have a good time, not to dive into deeper meanings such as authorial intent

or theme. Upon entering high school, my love for reading began to fade. As reading assignment

upon reading assignment weighed down on me, I continually felt less and less motivated to do

them. However, I persisted. I pushed through the barrier. Through careful thought and reflection,

I realized that the readings were not going to be the main culprits keeping me from achieving an

A; it was me.

Being an AP student, doing the bare minimum was simply not enough to earn an A. Upon

deciding to take on the challenge that is AP Literature, I was fully aware of the workload

required to succeed in such a class. Friends constantly told me: why are you taking that class?

Its so much reading. or You read every week. Youll be up late every day. I did not mind. I

wanted to push myself. Leading up to my senior year, I had to read classics such as: The Great

Gatsby, The Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Instead of reading these novels for fun, I was stuck reading them for a grade or an assignment. It

took all of the excitement away from enjoying the novel as a story. We were expected to know

the significance of the green light from The Great Gatsby; or determine whether or not humans
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are inherently good or evil through the events in The Lord of the Flies; or answer the impossible

question of whether or not The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is racist and if it should be

taught in school. On top of understanding these heavy topics, we were expected to develop them

as arguments or claims within an essay. Without knowing it, I was taking steps to develop my

literacy. In the AP Literature class, As were given to whoever displayed mastery in interpreting

the material and utilizing it as evidence within a written work. Too focused on trying to achieve

the best grade possible, I never slowed down and thought of why I was reading the material that I

was reading, or writing the way I was writing. Instead of appreciating the process of reading and

writing, I thought of it as things I had to master in order to achieve a certain grade.

The course itself wasnt as hard as I originally thought it was going to be. As it was AP

Literature, I had to familiarize myself with texts ranging from Shakespeares Hamlet to Orwells

1984. To me, they were just more assignments that I had to read for a class in order to get an A. I

read them and did what I had to. In reading and writing for that class, I seemingly forgot the

purpose of all the work: preparing for the AP exam later that year. In forgetting, I developed

habits that could get me through the class, but not through the test. One such example was the

fact that I didnt address my struggles with rhetorical analysis. In order to practice, we would be

assigned past AP prompts and be expected to respond to them. Instead of doing them for myself

and finding my own arguments, I largely relied upon a group to identify certain rhetorical effects

and come up with arguments; I rarely contributed. I just took what was given to me and wrote.

This usually was adequate enough for me to earn a decent score on my essay, but it didnt help

me prepare at all. I wasnt reading and formulating my own opinions. I was simply a product of a

class discussion. In the weeks leading up to the AP exam, I attempted to re-familiarize myself

with the texts that we went over in class; it yielded little results. My poor reading habits didnt
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allow me to fully understand the texts that we were assigned. By failing to prepare myself, I was

preparing myself to fail the exam.

A few weeks later, the day came. Test day was here. I cleared my mind and mentally

prepared myself for the exam. Once the test proctor finished up the instructions, she announced,

Okay. You may start now. You have exactly an hour to complete the multiple choice section.

Good luck! I opened up the packet and got to work. With every excerpt, I essentially repeated

the process I was taught: I read, I analyzed, I answered. I was feeling fine until I looked up at the

clock. There was five minutes remaining with one section left. I grinded the process out one last

time. I couldnt afford to second-guess myself. I just had to put an answer down. Right as I filled

out the last bubble, I heard the proctor yell, Times up! Put your pencils down, close your test

booklet, and put it to the front of the table! Hands cramping, I set my pencil down and patiently

waited for the proctor to gather my multiple choice answers. With break time running out-both

mentally and physically, I tried to slow down, compose myself, and gather my scattered

thoughts. I told myself: Remember what you learned. Dont worry, you are prepared. You got

this. Three essays, two hours, one last time that you have to stress over it. Amazingly, in the

short amount of time that we were given to recuperate, I reflected upon the whole AP Literature

exam experience; something I did not ever do while I was in the class.

Within the reflection I thought about what brought me to that exact point. In an effort to

reduce stress and anxiety, I went over the reasons why I was even taking the exam in the first

place and why I thought I was prepared. I had determined that I was there for a couple of

reasons. First, it was a testament to me not backing down from a challenge. Again, I was fully

aware that the class and exam were among the hardest of the APs. I wanted to see if I could take

on the challenge and pass. Second, I was there because I wanted to see if I could earn college
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credit by passing the exam. Finally, I figured I was there for a deeper reason: most of my reading

choices led me to that point. I was there because my choices to read and challenge myself led me

there. I was there because I wanted to be there. Once I addressed these questions, motivation and

confidence surged through me. I was reinvigorated. I was ready to tackle the written prompt.

Before I knew it, the break was over and we continued our trek through the exam. I

opened up the writing portion and started to scan through the prompts. Theres the poetry

section, theres the prose section, theres the open-ended section, I told myself. Because the

prose section appeared to be pretty dense with information, I saved it for last. Idea by idea,

paragraph by paragraph, I slowly grinded and composed two decent essays. I was doing fine

until I opened up the prose section and started to read what was in front of me. I absolutely hit a

wall. I started to question myself: What am I reading? Within the text itself, the author starts to

use pronouns after the first paragraph. Instead of referencing specific names, the author uses he,

his, and him. This made it extremely confusing to follow what was going on in the text. I began

to doubt myself; I had an eerie feeling that I may have been misinterpreting the text wrong. I

realized that if I was reading the text wrong, I could miss a huge portion of the exam because I

would be arguing the wrong thing. Missing a large portion of the exam would extremely hinder

my chances of attaining a high score for this exam. My heart started to race, my palms started to

get sweaty, and my confidence started to waver. I shifted my attention to two main questions,

how am I going to respond to this? And how am I going to do it in under 45 minutes? Instead

of worrying, I forced myself to take a few deep breaths and slow down. I knew I had to start soon

so I put my pencil down and wrote. Gears grinding, steam coming out of my brain, I grinded my

way through six paragraphs. Finally I was finished. I stacked my papers up, gave it to the

proctor, and left the testing room. I was free.

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As I walked back with friends, we were discussing the prose passage. What was that

passage haha. Who even won the fight? It was Mr. Pickle right?

No, my friend responded. It was Godfrey.

I felt my heart drop straight through my body. I realized that I had read the passage

completely wrong. Initially, I was more concerned about the score itself. I was totally worried

about what that meant for my results rather than the actual process of learning from it. I thought

to myself, I failed. Theres no way I can succeed if I cant read a passage correctly. Frustration

from my misinterpretation started to boil within me. On top of that, feelings of anxiety and doubt

started to cast a dark shadow over me. That anxiety and doubt stemmed straight from my fear of

a failing grade. To me, a failing grade meant anything other than an A. Because of my

aspirations to make it into a prestigious university, I thought that having good grades was the

only way to getting into a good school. I cared less about the learning and more about the letter

grade. Getting a B was the equivalent of not doing well enough; I absolutely did not want to fail.

It wouldve hurt my ego and it wouldve been a waste of a class and money. This passage

revealed something to me: failure was a serious insecurity to me. Failure to perform and failure

to pass were two of my biggest fears.

It took a week to get over the fact that I read the passage wrong. All was well for

summer. All of a sudden, I got the dreaded text message from a friend: whatd you get on your

AP exams. Heart pounding, I check under the AP scores tab and look for AP Literature. I

passed. Relief instantly flowed over me. I wasnt a failure.

This experience opened my eyes. As an aspiring student, Im constantly caught up in

how to achieve the best possible grades. Very rarely do I ever stop, slow down and really

understand the reason for assignments in school. This is apparent in my reading habits. I would
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only read in order to get the grade; it wasnt for personal fulfillment or anything else. It was

simply, how can I get the best grade from this reading? Reflecting upon the past texts, I realized

that all the texts were chosen for specific reasons: to teach and to draw from. Reading is meant

so that we can learn something from it. Its more than just a grade. Ultimately, literacy can be

defined as a persons ability to read and write. Reading and writing arent things we are born

with; theyre things we learn. Through constant reading and writing, we develop an

understanding to more complex texts and more complex ways of writing. This is all part of the

development of literacy. Like anything that requires learning, there comes failure. Failure to read

something right or failure to write something sufficiently are common failures within literacy.

But failure isnt a bad thing. In fact, without failure, we can never grow. Failure isnt the reason

why we are not smart. Its the reason we develop grit and push through to become smarter.

Through my test experience, I realized that not reading the text correctly doesnt mean Im a

failure. It means theres more to improve upon to develop my literacy. My reading habits arent

perfect, but because of them, I have realized why reading is such an essential part to teaching.

Literacy is learning.