Mental Health Paper!

Do you look at yourself as a number? Which leads me to my next question should the SAT and ACT be the primary determinant of what college you are allowed to attend? Research has shown that "1 in 5 children in the U.S. have learned and thought about differences like dyslexia and ADHD. These challenges are caused by variations in how the brain develops and processes information. However, it is unrelated to intelligence. It just means that kids need strategies and support to help them thrive '' (Understood page 5). I have always heard that grades and your test score are what defines you to colleges, and in my opinion, I never understood why! Therefore, being dyslexic, I am here to state that if one has a very hard-working ethic and is overall great student but is just a terrible test taker does not mean a person does not have what it takes or does not have the ability that most other kids have; whom are good test takers bring to the table. It means we are all different thinkers and test-takers as long as a person has a fantastic workethic, has their combination meet for their learning disability, and can receive financial Bauer 3 help. Why should we be looked upon as different? I do not see why SAT scores should determine any of that, and neither does Harvard. When it comes to standardized testing, it hits to heart. It is so important to me because being a person with impressive grades yet just not a great test-taker, many people have told me I will not or will have a hard chance to be successful in life because of my learning disability. However, if you think about it when the system is set up against you, then, of course, people will label you as a bad test taker. Nevertheless, that word should not even exist because it is not that one is a terrible test taker. After all, the system is just not able to understand your way of thinking. In this world, I would say we have been taught from a very young age to be in the box thinkers, and so when an out of the box thinker comes to a very inside the box system, we cannot possibly pass their test because they do not think we are quote on quote thinking correctly. So this topic is so important to me because I am living proof that you are more than just a test score and that college should and are starting to understand that! Therefore, I favor no SAT or ACT or any standardized testing for that matter; because, in my opinion, I do not believe it shows the type of person you really are or how well you will do at college. A person's work ethic and grade and one's learning differences and financial support should come to play when colleges are looking at you! I believe that the grades and one's overall workethic are what a college should be looking at on a screen, opposed to an SAT or ACT score, which is no match to a person's true capability. Having an amazing workethic can take a person very far in life. If you put love and care into your work, that should matter, not the grade. Because at the end of the day, a grade is just a letter or a number, and in a couple of years, it will not matter. You might even look back in 20 years Bauer 4 and ask yourself why I stress about that 89%. When I think of a good student's characteristics, it is a person that puts in time and effort, which can be shown in their work. That, to me, is how I look at grades and workethic. My first reason for supporting this would be taking a look at dyslexia students. An excellent example of how hard workability can take you far in life; is taking a long look at dyslexia students. From being told countless times, grades are all that matters, and a person needs to be an all A's student to go far in life. Moreover, being diagnosed with dyslexia ever since the 2nd grade. I remember getting hit on the hands with When spelling a word wrong, this just made me practice every day and every night to remember how a word was correctly spelled. I have been doing this since the age of 8 and have been doing so ever since, and any time I wanted to give up, I looked around and saw all my classmate's spelling words and their names correctly while I looked down at my paper, and everything was backward. I would go home almost everyday crying, thinking this would never end, and when I got to high school, the saying it is going to get a lot harder before it gets any better; is such a true statement, and I live by it remind myself daily. but I stayed up countless hours studying, getting ready, working harder than half my classmates, and when I started to tell myself I can do it; I am smart, only then did it start to get better. I am, in fact, living proof it will and can get better. I am an all A’s student now and was invited to be in The National Hornos Society at my high school. Thanks to my hard workethic without it, I do not think I would be here today. Such as this study that I researched which states that “The school drop-out rate of dyslexics can be a high as 35%, twice as the national average school drop-out rate of many countries;4,5,13 in the United States, 27% of the high school drop-out has learning disabilities” (Al-Lamki, page 15). Bauer 5 Even for the longest time, I had no idea what a GPA even stood for. Once I saw that it was necessary, I started to care and research and learn more about it. I decided right then and there; I was never going to have a bad GPA. I still remember the day I got all A's. It took countless nights of endless crying and wanting to give up, but I never did. I never let it stop me; my dad would always tell me that dyslexia is like running a race with one leg while everyone else was on the finish line jumping and screaming, I was still at the start. However, once I got that report card back, I promised myself now that I know I can get all A's, I will continue to get all As, and since then, I have only seen A's. I am now sitting at a 4.0 GPA. Even though the race is not a far one, I will continue to run it because it is the card I was dealt with. Moreover, just because the cards I was given are not the best, it does not mean things will not get better. Furthermore, I will keep working my hardest to get it higher and higher. Regards to my learning disability, which lots of college students say, "...dyslexia may take longer to finish tests, have messy handwriting, read slowly, and have trouble with note-taking. Those with dysgraphia may take longer to write, and their work might be filled with grammar and spelling errors. These issues can take a big toll on a student's self-esteem" (Writers, par. 7). But they will never break us down because we are relentless. Lastly, most kids do not have the financial ability to get help, such as tutors and extra help for the SAT or even college prep. Many would say that they have their high school teacher and parent, but what if they learn differently? As I stated above, this world is taut to learn and stay inside the box, which most teachers teach. Since day one, we are outside the social norm box, and many people do not know how to handle that. If you look around Frisco, you will see many people that got tutors and extra help because luckily Frisco is a very wealthy place, but I Bauer 6 take a look at my mother and how she grew up in an area and was not able to receive the help that I am getting today and how that has affected her. It is almost like she feels that her cards were too bad and gave up too early in light of that. No one gave her the time of day because they were labeled as not Intelligent by this inside the box society. Therefore, I disagree because, like I have been stating, my mother is one of the most hard-working people I know, who has also been dealt the card of having dyslexia. Furthermore, with that, she never even took her SAT because of the what-if question everyone put into her head; when researching "Only a fraction of 1 percent of students who take the SAT scored a perfect 1600 or, on the ACT, a composite 36 on the four subject areas"(Sulek pg. 28)—proving that why do we take this test if so little even score a perfect score. Not even the most intelligent people who have walked this earth said they were good test takers and had terrific grades in high school; some even dropped out. It takes effort and perseverance to get what you want and run with it. Therefore, looking at how many students get a perfect score shows that standardized testing does not account for everything about a person. A person should be looked at how they spent their high School years such as clubs and grades and how hard they worked for those grades, and most importantly, were they able to get extra help financially and with their learning differences, because surprisingly I feel like most people take that for granted. We are trying to make it in this world. This race should be as far as it can be. Furthermore, we need to teach that to children at young ages to have even a lower drop out and mental health rate.