Using Positive Peer Pressure

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I sat in calculus class waiting impatiently for the teacher to pass back my exam. I look at the grade and then instinctively look behind me. My best friend, Sam, looked rather pleased; she understood this math lesson, and her grade reflected it. ‘One down one to go,’ I thought as I looked to my back left. My other best friend, Lettie, looked confused. I asked her what she got and she said a grade that was lower than mine. I grabbed her paper in disbelief. I compared the grades, and my grade was in fact a point higher. Lettie tried to shrug it off. She said that she just didn’t get it, or that she didn’t care about this little exam, because there were far more important assignments in her life at the time. The excuses were always similar, but they never stopped me. I turned back to Sam with the reddest face I had and announced that I did better than Lettie. All of the blood rushed to my head and I became so excited. I couldn’t hold it in anymore; soon all of my friends that sat around us soon knew that I was smarter than Lettie, at least this time I was.

A calculus exam that I was proud of was just another perk of being best friends with the Valedictorian. Striving to do good in school was not something that I learned to do for myself; it was something that I did to compete with my best friends. Since ninth grade, Lettie was number one in our class. Her GPA was so high that there wasn’t much real competition with her. Everyone knew that she would be our Valedictorian. My other friends also started off to a great start with their class ranks. They seemed to finish out the top ten. During their worst marking period, they would peak at fifteen, but no higher. Their good grades remained constant throughout high school. Everyo...

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...uld still be my friends. The pressure that I put on myself was a personal choice that made me feel like a successful student.

As for my disassociation with the high school experience, I related most with Sam (from The Pact.) He was unsure of medical school. Thoughts constantly made him reconsider his life choices. He stayed with the dream that he created until it became the dream that he wanted to live.

I am happy to say that I still use positive peer pressure on myself. My best friends and I still communicate with each other. Although our dreams differ from teacher to fashion designer to engineer, we never stopped comparing work. Emails constantly consist of questions concerning grades and class work. As I type this, I think ‘I hope I get a good grade so that when my friends come home I can show them everything that I have accomplished in college thus far!’

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