Will the New Year Bring out the best for me?

First off, I think that we can all agree that the past year has put some strains on peoples lives, particularly mine. I've kind of been running in the slow lane when it comes to my life. Since I finished high school back in 2014, I had to put a pause on a lot of things, including school. Now, while that may be normal to take a break from education, I sometimes think I put it off for too long and at the time, I was dealing with a family crisis, but that's another story for another time.

In between that time, I tried to find a job and I got lucky a couple of times but they didn't last long. It wasn't until 2018 that I finally decided to appy for college. I did give it some thought back when I was in high school, and I wanted to apply to my mother's alma mater, City College of New York, which is a senior college in the CUNY school system, but I didn't meet the GPA requirement so I had to apply for the community college.

So, in the past two years, I have been getting by with school and my grades and I still feel like I'm not getting anywhere. Along with school, I live with my mother and grandmother, who both have trouble getting around so I'm the only one able who can help around the house and run all kinds of errands like groceries and laundry. Some people would say that I should be living on my own at my age, and even I think that but it's a family thing. I won't go into it.

A little over a year ago, I have made progress with my grades and I almost made up the credits to graduate this year. I had enrolled for the Fall semester and was looking forward to taking what I thought would be my last classes after this Spring. It wasn't soon after the whole world shut down from the Coronavirus pandemic. All my classes switch to online and it wasn't too difficult but it was a little hard to adapt considering the worldwide crisis. Ultimately, everything was put on pause. Fortunately, I passed the classes and I even thought I could do better by applying for the summer and I did great. But my confidence didn't last.

Ultimately, all I could think about was how would I get by if this pandemic was still around when I started looking for a job. The unemployment rate was sky-high and I was pretty much finishing my last year of school. My anxiety didn't get better by the time the Fall term was starting. I was taking the classes that I finally wanted and I thought it would be fairly easy but, I can say now that I didn't put much efficiency and initiative into them. I failed all of them and it set me back on the credits I needed to graduate. And to top it all off, my grandmother is having more health problems so me and my mom have to be more attentive to her. I was getting so discouraged that I had to start seeking help academically and mentally.

The past year basically took a toll on me and I choose to ignore it, thinking that what's going on outside of school shouldn't be my problem if I wasn't fully affected by it. Sometimes my perspective on this life I'm living isn't helping me get through these tough times but every now and then, I have my moments of clarity to keep pushing until it gets better. Now with the new term starting, I have learned that I need to be more productive in my studies. I can't be too optimistic that I do well anymore but at the very least, I can do my best.