Working on Class Performance

JEBA: So I’m 18. I’m a senior in high school. And I am accepted to MIT. It was like my life was changed at that moment.

I remember where I was. I remember what happened when my family found out. We all just started crying all at the same time. It’s like, I cannot believe this is the life that I get to live. I was on top of the world.

No one in my family, in my school, in my town in a 50-mile radius had gone to MIT. I was the only one. And I could not believe it. This was the peak of my career, the peak of my life. Everything else is going to be so great from this point on.

Fast forward, it’s August. It’s orientation. And we’re just getting settled in. So it’s me. I made some friends, class of 2020. And everything’s going good.

School had just started. The weather is great. It’s not like the summer in Arizona. It’s really humid. I mean, sorry, it’s not really humid. It’s just perfect weather. I get to wear the clothes I want. I’ve been social.

So I’ve been making new friends left and right. Everyone’s trying to find out who among them is going to be this major, or is from that state, or is of this ethnicity, of that religion. So we’re all just scrambling to find friends. So socially, I was doing really, really good. And I didn’t notice the signs immediately.

There would be times where– like in chemistry, for example– I would overhear some students saying something like, oh, wow, we just covered all of AP chem in the past two weeks. And I was like, ooh. But I shrugged it off.

It’s going to be fine. I never took AP chem. I didn’t take too many rigorous APs in the first place. But it’ll be OK.

I understood what they understood. I was in lecture when they were in lecture. I go to recitations. We learn the same thing. It’s going to be fine.

But then things really started to go downhill when, after a couple of weeks in the first semester, I noticed that my test scores were just abominable compared to my peers. And that was worrisome, because whatever my friends did, I did. We studied all the time together.

So whatever they studied, I was in the room with them. We p-setted on the same things. We saw the same problems. We knew the same solutions.

But I was getting Cs and Ds. And my peers were getting 97s, 89s at worst. So it was kind of worrisome.

And I knew there were resources around, so I signed myself up for tutoring. I signed myself up for one-on-one tutoring, for class tutoring. It’s called Seminar XL. I went to office hours more. I worked with my friends even more.

I made sure that, if I did complete a problem with them, I wouldn’t let them go on without me saying, OK, wait, so this is how we do it, right? I would talk to upperclassmen. I would just do everything I needed to do. And even despite all the work I was putting in, I didn’t see any improvements in my grades. It was like I was trying all of these solutions.

OK, there’s this problem. I’m going to try solution A, and it doesn’t work. So I’m going to try solution B. It doesn’t work. Solution D doesn’t work. And by the time we’re at solution G or J, I’m freaking out a little bit.

And I don’t want to tell people, because everyone says freshman year, you struggle. But I don’t think anyone struggled like I struggled. Or maybe they just didn’t say it.

My grades didn’t get any better, and things started to slip. It was just perpetual Ds and Cs. And it’s like I was clawing around for the problem, not even the solution. I just want to know what my problem is at this point.

And sometimes, I would go into office hours. They would be like, OK, kiddo, what’s up? What’s wrong? And honestly, I couldn’t tell you what was wrong. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So it was this panic.

As the semester continued, it started to become a self hate. And that, for me, was really, really hard, because I’ve never been one to hate myself. And it was at this point in the semester where I would literally schedule time after a test so that I could just cry, because I knew I needed it.

So my mom knew that I had to go home. So she flew me for Easter break. And the second I got off that plane, I was feeling this dread– like, in four days, I have to go back. I have to continue my Psets. I have to go back to that way of life– the self-hate, the misery.

And so the four days get by. And I’m back at the airport. And my mom’s dropping me off. And I hadn’t even entered the terminal. And I’m just crying. I have to go back. I have to leave my mom. I leave this safe, safe place.

And my mom, she tells me a little bit about the story of me and my family. She told me that, back in LA around the time she was about to give birth to me, she was in labor. And while she was in labor, she rode two LA city public buses with my toddler brother in hand– as you know, she’s in immense pain– to give birth to me.

And so she tells me, Jeba, this is how you entered the world, through struggle and through strife. But she tells me, in a way, that I was born a fighter, that I come from another fighter. She told me about how there were times in LA where she was so busy and working so hard just to support our family that there would be weeks where she wouldn’t shower. She would only wear one change of clothes as she’s taking care of me, and my brother, and the home, and her job, no car.

And my dad also tells me stories about his time as a freedom fighter when he was just 13. In 1971, Bangladesh won its independence. And my dad was a freedom fighter for that. And he told me about times where he would wade through the mud, waist deep, with bullets spraying from left and right, not knowing who was the enemy, not knowing who was the camp. And he told me about the time where he returned from his time in the army to just a house all burnt down, none of our relatives there, just flattened, no directions, no explanation, no nothing.

And these stories– they tell me a little bit about the people I come from, the fighter that is in all of our blood, that this is the legacy that we have. And I’m only continuing it, and that this is my fight. But if they did it, I will, too.

So I’m back on campus. And the words of encouragement and truth from my parents are still in my head. I’m still struggling, just as ever. But I’m just reflecting on that. And it’s Friday night. I probably failed another test or something. But I don’t want to see anyone.

And there’s this movie playing on campus. They’re showing Hidden Figures, which just came out that year. And so I decide to go see it, just by myself.

And Hidden Figures is about three African-American women and their contributions to launching a rocket. They’re scientists, and engineers, and mathematicians. And the idea is that, despite their struggles at home and in the workplace, without their contributions, none of it would have been possible.

And at the end of the movie, there’s this quote by JFK. I don’t remember exactly, but it goes like, we go to the moon, among other hard things, not because they’re easy, but because they are difficult. And so that’s a spark in me. It gave me the courage to keep going.

A lot of the times, where I’ll get a bad grade or I’ll get rejected from an internship, I’m not discouraged by that failure. If I want something, if I really, really want it, it’s not going to stop me. So it’s been two years. I’m a junior now. And it’s still not always perfect.

Sometimes, I still will get hit really hard by rejection of an internship. Sometimes, I still get bad grades here and there. It happens. But I have never been one to shy away from something just because it’s hard.

If anything, if I want it, and if the more convenient solution is to not go that route, I won’t take it. I will never go the path of least resistance. And I feel like this is preparing me for something in the future. I’m going through this training, if you will, because there’s big things in store for me and for my family. I’m going to be the one to change my family’s legacy.

I’m not the pinnacle of achievement in my family. How can I be? What my mom did, what my dad– I won’t be. But I want to make them proud.

And it’s crazy, because just this past IAP, I was teaching high schoolers computer science. I was the one teaching them about algorithms. I got a 30% on my first intro programming class. I remember I was crying. I just left the class, and I was just crying to S^3 or whatever.

And here I was. I’m teaching them. They’re looking up to me. At the end of the program, some of them come to me. And they say, Jeba, we’re so inspired by you and all the other female instructors here.

I mentor students sometimes in my free time. I mentor my friends, especially the freshmen who I can tell are going through something really, really difficult that they’re not willing to share with others. And so that, for me– it feels like redemption.