Sophomore Year
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”- Confucious
Ammar Panjwani is a self-proclaimed “raging teenager, and professional Minecraft architect” (only one of these claims is true, and it’s not professional Minecraft architect).
He’s 16 years old, a sophomore in high school, and my little brother.
As a sophomore, he’s supposed to be taking his first few AP exams this year. Four years ago when I was in the same position as him, I would come home from school at around 6:00 pm, attend religious ceremonies, and then start cramming for school at around 8:00.
I had stacks of AP books, went to tutoring sessions about twice a week, frequented after-school review sessions, and barely slept the week before working on practice problems and essays. But Ammar’s experience is a little different.
He would wake up at 12:00 pm- 1:00 pm on Fridays, watch YouTube in bed till about 2:00 and then proceed to haul himself out of bed. He would eat, annoy me with bad puns or roasts, and then finally sit down to work at about 3:00.
Since he attends a public school, there is no scheduled time for class. He is given assignments every so often that are typically due in a week’s time and spends the rest of his day playing games or talking to his friends on Discord.
Ammar’s lifestyle is a teenage introvert’s dream, but it’s not ideal.
He’s no longer graded on any sort of scale, he simply “meets expectations” or “does not meet expectations”.
Of course, these times call for leniency, which ultimately means that he struggles with developing structure.
It’s not his fault, a self-developed structure is something that we learn on impulse in college, university, or when we enter the workforce. That’s when life is supposed to kind of hit you and say “figure it out”, not in high school.
Although, we’re learning. When we don’t have structure, we build a structure. My mother and I work together to set my brother with hard deadlines. Since he doesn’t have any sort of AP review sessions, I review his World History essays and quiz him on Confucianism. We try to regulate screen time as much as possible, but that is difficult too.
He’s mad about it, and I get it, I would be too- but I believe it’s the best we can do. Structure and deadlines, to me, are concepts that are easier enforced when it comes to strangers. It’s more encouraging to work towards deadlines that impress strangers since it’s innate human nature to want to impress others.
Don’t get me wrong, Ammar is eager to learn. He speaks about his favorite subjects with a passion that is second to none. Nevertheless, this is foreign to him, and he’s learning to adjust- everyone is.
Regardless, as slow as it may be, he grows as he learns. And he never stops growing…
