I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [57]
What is most amazing to me is that Miss Sue did it all for free. Where I came from, there was always a "You gotta get paid" mentality, but Miss Sue wasn't interested in teaching me--or anyone--for money. I mean, of course she had worked as a teacher professionally and got a paycheck for it, but it was clear to me from the beginning that she was someone who knows the reason God put her on this earth, and it is to teach people who need some extra help. No one would put in that kind of time and effort and work with that much passion if they were only doing it to get something material out of it. The patience she had with me as I worked through problems and assignments, and the excitement she had whenever I got them right, were real and came from a place inside that was concerned first and foremost with my achievement.
I have to admit, though, that it was tough at first for me to accept her help. I mean, I'd been relying on myself for so long that it was kind of scary to say to someone else, "Okay, I need you. I'm going to let you show me how this works." I'd had people looking out for me before, but never in quite the same way that Miss Sue did. She wasn't just teaching me skills, she was building my sense of confidence in my own abilities. She wasn't just helping me get through each day, she was working to help me meet my long-term life goals.
My last semester in high school, I made the honor roll, which remains one of the proudest accomplishments of my life. In order to attain the NCAA's GPA requirements, though, I needed to do some extra work to make up for my earlier years in high school before I got to Briarcrest and while I was still adjusting to a more rigid academic schedule.
Instead of jumping into summer vacation like so many of my friends, I began work with a series of online courses offered through Brigham Young University that were approved by the NCAA for core course requirements for athletes trying to improve their GPAs. The grades earned there can be used to replace older, failing grades on the transcript, and it was an exciting series of courses for me. Subjects covered a wide range, including foreign languages, math, social studies, business, and English. It was a wonderful program for kids like me to go back and redo some of the courses we didn't get right the first time.
Now that I was so much more confident in my ability to study, I gobbled up those courses, studying authors and historic figures, writing reports on poems and novels. Each time I finished one and got my grades back, I felt like I was erasing a failure from my past. Just because I didn't have someone to show me how to learn effectively when I was fifteen didn't mean I had to lose out on a chance for college now.
I was very fortunate to have such a strong support system of people who were really concerned with helping me catch up. If I had known how much work it was going to take to get my grades up, I would have been in the books more when I was younger. It was my freshman year, when I was still in the public schools and still cutting class a lot to hang out, that caused the problems. I am just grateful that I had the opportunity to make up for some of my earlier mistakes and poor decisions because I know that most kids in my situation don't get that second chance.
And, of course, Miss Sue was cheering me on the whole way. By the time I had brought my high school GPA up to the standard, I was excited about starting college in a way I never thought I would be. I wasn't just ready to play football; I was ready to start working on my degree.
Miss Sue, in the meantime, had applied for a tutoring job with the university and was offered the position! That fall, it wasn't just Collins and I who were moving to