2026 – Julia Gubler – Union High School HS

A Struggle For Sisu

The only thing you have to do in life is die. I am not required to be taking AP Calculus, I am not required to be taking AP Literature, and I am not required to even graduate high school. I am not forced to wake up, attend all my classes, and do all my assignments. Nobody is making me do it. And believe me, I absolutely loathe school. So the question is: Why? Why bother with it at all?

As I’ve mentioned, I’m taking some AP classes this last year of high school, the more noteworthy being AP Calculus. Although I like the teacher and I can tell he cares about his students and wants to see them succeed, and although my own dad has a master’s degree in math, twenty-eight years of experience teaching math, and helps me every day with my homework, I continually don’t understand. I watch as the kids who spend the whole class hour being distracted by unimportant things pass their tests and quizzes without much struggle, while I fail those assignments and have to review and review again to hopefully save my grade with my retakes. Throughout my life, mostly when I was younger, I have regularly been perceived as a “smart kid” because of my dad’s reputation, yet I don’t think I have ever felt more stupid. I would unquestionably say that both of my younger brothers are much smarter than me. As much as I would like to say that I don’t care about that sort of thing, it does hurt to know that so many other people around me find things easy while I find them so difficult. I sometimes wonder if perhaps I am doing something wrong, or maybe I am just not destined to be as knowledgeable as others. I would be lying if I said that I don’t constantly wish I would give up, drop the class, and receive my 50 dollar (of the 100 spent) refund for changing my mind and deciding not to take the AP Calculus test. I don’t end up doing those things. The exact answer why not is still something of a mystery to me, but I’ll try my best to explain.

There’s a Finnish word called “sisu” that doesn’t have an exact translation to English. This word is important to me because my grandmother was a Finn, making me about 25% Finnish. Another thing my family has been trying to learn is  the Finnish language, which also is contributing to the doubts of my intelligence. Anyways, the word “sisu” could be used in a lot of different contexts; most simply put, it is perseverance, resilience, and courage when faced with overwhelming challenge or adversity. It’s often related to “grit” or “tenacity”, however, I feel like these explanations don’t give the concept justice. Sisu involves spirit, a deep inner strength and refusal to give up. I want to be able to say that I have sisu. Maybe I will never be good at math, maybe I won’t ever feel like I’ve escaped feelings of stupidity, and maybe I won’t excel in the ways I imagine, but I want to be able to say that I had sisu despite any of that. And, something I am also slowly but surely learning, is that I don’t need to compare myself to others. I will never be the same as anyone else, so there is no reason to contrast who I am with who someone else is; nobody would liken wet to dry or light to dark.

School is not a place I ever like to be. Either the classes are too advanced, therefore wearing me out, or are too easy, therefore boring me, or are too insignificant, therefore wasting my time. I’m not a social person; I especially don’t like classes with teachers that assign me to stand up and present, or get up and debate with my classmates. I get easily annoyed and frustrated with people unable to be respectful, follow the rules, or at least leave so they don’t disrupt the learning of others. Nonetheless, I know that every person in my school building is struggling with something. Each person is going through a trial, everybody has been raised in a different way than me, and all of them have gone through different experiences than myself. I hope I always continue to believe that every life is a life worthy of respect and love, and that helps me to accept the company around me at school a little better. And finally, in spite of the fact that I complain so much about school, I understand that having an education is extremely important and will be impossibly useful in every aspect of the things I end up doing. I have an opportunity much of the world doesn’t have, so I might as well utilize it and be grateful for it.

Most people believe that I have a very strict father, but I don’t know if I fully agree with that statement. I’m not certain what qualities make parents “strict”, but I think something that might disprove that observation is the question that always comes when we give a report card to him, which is, “Did you try your best?” If the answer is yes, then nothing else really matters. Would skipping my classes and doing no assignments be my best? Would purposely aiming low and scraping by with the bare minimum be the actions of someone with sisu? So, it is true that I don’t have to go to school or graduate, that nobody is forcing me or making me do it, but I would like to do more in life than simply die.