By far, the last three weeks have been some of the hardest I’ve ever experienced in high school. Calculus has been a hard subject for me the entire year, but recently I have been having trouble with understanding the lessons, leaving me to the sharks of luck that swirl around me in the pit below. Not to mention, the end of the year is coming up quickly, which means that AP tests are fast approaching. Review in my multiple AP level classes on top of an already stacked schedule of homework and working two jobs, one during school, and one during the weekend (which quite literally leaves me with 0 free time), I thought that things surely couldn’t get any worse. That was, until I caught the flu.

I knew that something had been going around the school. Students like Casey Patterson had been out for a week at a time, disappearing and reappearing seemingly out of nowhere. My brother ended up catching it too, but even a week after, I thought I was safe because I didn’t seem to have any symptoms. Then one Monday morning, I felt it all. The extreme weakness, the blistering headache. It was like every single part of my body was trying to tell me that it was suffering. My mom understood that I had the flu, and I stayed home, falling asleep shortly after she left for work. A little while after waking up, I started to get a fever. The weakness, stuffy nose, insomnia caused by sinus headaches, and the fever all persisted for days, until I could finally return on the Friday of the week. The reality was though, what I returned to made me wish I was back in bed at home sick. I had missed a Calculus test on a chapter I didn’t really understand, I had missed crucial review for the AP Spanish test, the list kept piling up. A week later I’m still not done making everything up, as teachers are busy, and I needed to keep up with my regular assignments. I’ve had to go through nights of so much work I was up until 2 AM just trying to finish it all, sometimes falling asleep before I have the chance (In fact, I’m sitting here right now staring at the clock which reads 23:51). My grades have plummeted due to this work, causing me even more distress. However, I push myself through every day knowing that at some point, everything will correct itself, and that I just have to work as hard as possible in order to make sure that I can keep up to speed. It will take a lot, but I know that this experience will build me as a person, and that it will eventually lead to me being strong enough to handle the stresses of higher education and life itself.