What It Means To Be Enough by Isabela

What It Means To Be Enough by Isabela - July 2026 Scholarship Essay

If you were to ask my 11th grade self how important I thought math class would be for my life, I’d probably secretly pray to all entities that it wouldn’t be important or even beneficial for my own well being. Why? Well, that academic year, the thing or the event– whatever you want to call it– that made me cry the most was probably Honors Pre-Calculus.
Throughout high school, I always had a shaky relationship with math. It was endlessly validating when I did good or even great on an exam or a test, but the journey to get there often didn’t feel worth it. It always felt like I had to try so much harder for my mind to think the ‘mathematical’ way. I never understood how my best friend of the time just ‘got it’. I often found myself sitting in class, wondering what I was lacking, how I could find a way to just ‘get it’. This mentality and difficulty for the subject reached a new level in 11th grade. Even though math was always challenging for me, I come from a family of immigrants. Which is to say, difficulty was not verbiage that was connected to giving up; because giving up was a moral wrongdoing of one’s character, a flaw if you will. I’m not necessarily shaming this way of thinking, it’s helpful to force yourself to work ardently for the things you don’t feel are rightfully yours. There is an honesty to that mindset that I deeply admire.
Going back to my math class. I had a terrible time. I kept thinking to myself, that it would just be this year, that this class was not a reflection of my character– silly I know. Now, almost four years later, I can truthfully tell myself that the grade I got for the class wasn’t a reflection of my character; but taking the class was. The entirety of that class was an academic subject that challenged me, it made me doubt myself, it made me cry, and everything in between. Yet, looking back, I’m so glad I took that class.
While I can’t necessarily say a lot of the topics I learned in that math class are things I carry with me to this day– in fact, I often proudly boast the fact that I have not had to take a math class in college– there are many things that the simple act of taking that class gave me. For instance, it taught me endurance. To me, I’ve always had a connection to endurance in a very physical sense. Playing soccer throughout my childhood and early adolescence has ‘forcefully’ taught me what it means to be out of breath, to be seemingly on the edge, but to find a way to keep pushing forward. This keen sense of endurance was completely transformed in this math class. I finally understood what it meant to experience a mental hardship and keep pushing forward.
This math class taught me what it means to think. Which is to say, so many times I found myself dumbfounded. I found myself sitting in that class as a listener, not an active participant. I had nothing to add since it felt like I knew nothing. All that time of sitting there, eventually, forced me to be creative. To find alternative ways to think about the concept, to formulate plans to go home and study the subject. In all honesty, it taught me how to manage my emotions whilst managing my time. It was very difficult to not equate my own sense of worth to my incapability to do high school math; and yet, I found a way.
I cannot stress enough that doing something, even for a whole academic year, is enough. Going there every day, or every other day, and putting yourself in such a position is enough. It’s enough to radically transform you, it’s enough. You just have to be willing to do it.