PersonalNarrativeEssay

Nathan Gitter Gitter 1 English 8-4 11-17-08 Personal Narrative Essay My fourth grade teacher always said, “Never give up and always keep trying your hardest.” I never thought about it at the time, but those words have motivated me throughout my middle school life. I have grown up in a family of four boys in Mequon, Wisconsin. My brothers are Steven, Jeffrey, and Jon, who are 20, 17, and 12 respectively. Even though I have only moved houses once and never lived anywhere but Mequon, I have switched schools three times. Being in many different schools has made me more adaptable to numerous situations and difficulties. My middle school adventure has been shaped mostly by my family and the schools I have attended. At Wilson Elementary School, I participated in many activities that shaped my middle school career. First of all, in fourth grade, I started to play tennis. Tennis helped me stay active and learn many skills such as teamwork and perseverance. Many games I played for the Steffen tennis team lasted longer than usual. For example, in seventh grade, I started playing a game at about 4:00 which was one of the first games to start. However, the game went until 6:00, which was definitely the last game to finish. Even though it went into a lengthy overtime, I ended up winning the game because I persisted and had more motivation than my opponent. Also at Wilson Elementary School, I became very interested in math. Six times in the year, my math teacher gave us a six-question, 30-minute, story problem test that was done by kids nationwide. My math teacher, Mrs. Mandelman, was so confident in her abilities that she said, “No one is Gitter 2 allowed to finish the test before me.” She was also very confident that she could do fifth-grade math better than fifth-graders. However, when I came along, I was confident that I could at least tie her score. After all of the test scores were counted, I received a perfect 36/36, while Mrs. Mandelman received a lowly 35/36. At the end of the school year, I was awarded a special medal from the Continental Mathematics League. Fifth-grade math taught me that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. Lastly, I started to play the trumpet at Wilson. As is shown on my life map, I enjoyed the trumpet considerably more than the piano. Previously, my brother played the trumpet at Homestead High School, and I decided to play it too. My band director at Wilson was Mrs. Garwisch, but my band director at Steffen was Mr. Feigles. Mr. Feigles was my favorite of the two because he improved the band playing expertise. Our band got ten times better in only two years. Through many activities in Wilson Elementary School, I got a strong basis for my activities at Steffen Middle School. My career as a middle schooler is mainly based at Steffen Middle School. I attended the school for both sixth and seventh grade. At Steffen, I continued the many activities that I did at Wilson. First, I continued to be very motivated to do math. To start, I passed the test to be in the math class of the grade above instead of being in the regular math program. This led to many schedule conflicts, which helped me be better at managing time and responsibilities. For example, when I left for our class trip to Washington D.C. in seventh grade, I had to find a time to make up the class work from the eighth grade math class. In seventh grade, I participated in MathCounts, which is a national math competition. Because I did very well during the meetings, I was picked as the only seventh grader on a completely eighth grade team to represent Steffen in Gitter 3 the regional meet. At the regional meet, our team got third place and therefore qualified to go to the state competition. The state MathCounts competition was the perk of my middle school experience so far, even though we placed 37th when there were only 35 teams competing. This must have been an error on MathCounts's part. Also, I continued to play the trumpet at Steffen. In November of last year, I was chosen by Mr. Feigles to participate in the UWM Honors Band Festival. In an intense weekend of playing and practicing, our director got full-sized band playing four songs at concert level. We performed an amazing concert and were astonished at how much we could get done in such a short amount of time. Although it took up all afternoon Friday, all day Saturday, and the morning on Sunday, it was nice to turn in my practice record of 720 minutes that week. Because I liked it so much, I am going to do it again this year and hopefully receive a higher chair position. My two years at Steffen were truly eventful and rewarding. My last year of my middle school adventure takes place at USM. Since I have only been there for about two months, I cannot say what the overall impact is. However, I do plan to continue many of the activities that I participated in at Steffen including tennis, MathCounts, and playing the trumpet. I hope that my eighth grade year will be a fantastic ending to my middle school adventure, and I plan on putting in all the effort to make it great. Throughout my middle school career the theme for me has been “be persistent." Whether I played a sport, did math problems, or played the trumpet, persisting has been the only way I have been able to succeed. As Thomas A. Edison once said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”