Blog #4: Rachel Dadas

A piece of public writing that I have been reading lately is a book for my EDUPL 259 class called A Hope in the Unseen. This book is important and significant to me because it is inspirational and I can relate to it personally in many ways.

The book is about a young African American boy named Cedric Jennings who is very intelligent but lives in a poorer neighborhood and goes to a not-so-nice high school. His peers were involved in gangs, drugs and violence while he just wanted to get his education. In his high school, being smart and at the top of his class isn't something to be proud about; it is more of a shameful thing. In order to be "cool" or one of the more respected popular kids, you weren't smart and you were involved in dangerous situations.

Cedric overcame the torture of being bullied because of his intelligence and was accepted into Brown University, a top college. After all of his hard work and effort, he accomplished his goal of going to the school of his dreams and proving to the other students that he could make it. Cedric spent the majority of his days in high school studying, doing practice tests, doing extra homework, and even got the best SAT score in his whole school. Unfortunately, all of his hard work and knowledge couldn't compare to the knowledge of his fellow students at Brown. They all went to better schools, grew up wealthy in better communities, and were way smarter than him. Cedric's SAT wasn't even nearly as high as the rest of the students. He struggled in his college classes and had to work so much harder than everybody else just to try to be on their same level.

I have not yet finished the book, but so far I can relate to Cedric's situation a lot. I went to a decent high school, but the course load was nothing compared to other high schools. My school only offered one AP class and nothing more than your basic math, English, history and science. I worked harder than almost any of the other kids in my grade to reach my dream of coming to Ohio State, and I succeeded, but I still feel as if I will never be as smart as the rest of my peers. I took the most rigorous classes offered at my high school, only to find out that everyone was still way ahead of me. While other students go out on weekends and have so much free time on their hands, I feel as if all I do is study 24/7 and I still don't do as well as them. To read about Cedric in the same type of situation is inspirational to me because he is overcoming all of the same problems I'm facing right now, so it gives me hope that I can succeed as well.