Fear Kills More Dreams Than Failure…Or Does It:

I yawn for the umpteenth time as I try to focus on the textbook page in front of me. Why do I care about the 1929 stock market, again? How does it apply to me or affect my life? As these unanswered questions spiral through my head, I nearly give in to the lure of sleep, but I realize with a start that I have not studied for my math test yet. The one I have been ignoring all week, hoping it would go away, be cancelled, or some catastrophic event would happen so I would be spared the agony of taking it. I look at the clock on my bedside table, alarmed to see that it is already well past midnight. I sigh and open my textbook, lazily flipping through the blur of words and numbers. As I finally reach the section on trigonometric functions, I feel my eyelids drooping, until…

I leap out of bed with a start as I realize three very important things. One, it is half-past seven in the morning. Two, I never studied for my math test last night. Three, this test could make or break my grade. I hear my mother’s voice yelling at me to hurry up and get ready, I grudgingly oblige, all the while acknowledging the bleakness of my fate, the likeliness that I am going to fail this test.

As I approach my math classroom, my heart pounding out of my chest, I frantically try to go over any information or past lessons I remember that could help me on this test. Unfortunately, nothing comes to mind. I sit down in my desk and get out a pencil and eraser, not that I can erase something that I have no way of knowing is a mistake or not. Staring at a paper full of numbers and equations that might as well be gibberish, I try to wrap my mind around any of them, even just one, to no avail. When the bell rings I file out of the classroom, defeated, and terrified of what the future may bring.

The next day, my teacher is hands back our tests, and I cringe as she places mine in front of me, my frantic handwriting scrawled all over it. I work up the courage to look at my grade, and am faced with angry, red print and a singular letter that could change them my life forever. An F.