Overall, my academic career has been a relatively good one. I had the great privilege and honor to graduate from high school at the top of my class. I had the good fortune to be accepted into the Macaulay Honors Program.  I had a perfect score on the Writing Section of the SAT. However, like all people, there have been times when I failed – when I didn’t do the best job I could, when I neglected to reach my full potential.

One such time was in Brooklyn College, when I took a course in Classical Cultures – a course that required me to read extensive amounts of Greek literature. Given the good academic fortune that I had enjoyed in the past, it seems that I became complacent with my schoolwork and my grades; I became overly satisfied and decided to slack off, a decision that I would sorely regret.

In that Classical Cultures class, I failed to do the required readings. Many times, I just skimmed over the tens of pages that I had been required to read. When it came time for midterms and finals, there was no way for me to make up all of the material that I had missed. Even though I had attended every class session religiously, my failure to do the assigned readings took a toll on my grades. I flunked the midterm, and my performance on the final wasn’t much better. In the end, the professor had mercy on me and gave me a C.

What happened next was even worse. My GPA sank below the required 3.5, and I was placed on academic probation and threatened that if I didn’t fix up my act, I would be expelled from Macaulay (Heaven forfend!). That accursed “C” had been a sorely needed wake-up call for me to cease being complacent and to start following along in the readings just like everybody else.

Alas, I had been thrown off my high horse. I had been toppled from the lofty status of high school valedictorian. Now, I was on probation, and it was pretty humiliating  that a person who had proudly delivered a valedictory address several years ago was now sitting in a room together with people who had been placed on probation – and I, too, was one of them.

A humiliating experience that, in the end, turned out well. After a series of probation meetings, I was able to re-focus on my studies and finally, this past semester, I brought my GPA to 3.52 and am no longer on academic probation. Let us hope and pray that it will stay that way.

In the meantime, however, my “failure” was a lesson in humility and caused me to have the stark realization that even a model student and a class valedictorian can fall, and fail, and be toppled from the pinnacle of his high school glory to the abyss of academic probation.