{"id":188661,"date":"2026-03-03T17:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T17:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/188661\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T17:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T17:32:08","slug":"letting-go-of-what-i-knew-best-the-prospector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/188661\/","title":{"rendered":"Letting go of what I knew best \u2013 The Prospector"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Iziah Moreno<\/a><\/p>\n

Second semester in, and I\u2019ve\u00a0reflected.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since kindergarten, I\u00a0was\u00a0not a perfect student. Shy, A-B honor roll, but I was also\u00a0very close\u00a0to getting\u00a0C\u2019s. I had a best friend who everybody compared me\u00a0to\u00a0and she was clearly the smarter one. I was not the worst, but I was not the best either. I grew insecure and academic validation was my life.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I have always doubted and compared myself to others. It was natural for me to grow envious of others because they were more involved than I\u00a0was\u00a0or they had five points higher than I did on a test. I joined so many clubs to show I was better than everyone. I\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0do anything for the right reasons. I carried this till my senior year of high school, making me quite a sour person.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I got into the University of Texas at Austin (UT). I could say UT was overrated, but it was my dream school. My mom cried when I announced my acceptance and I cried because I knew my decision was not to go. It\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0about the tuition or about a better school waiting for me; it was because I was too intimidated to go. I won\u2019t lie, it was hard to look at someone wearing a Longhorn hat, or going through Instagram stories and seeing people pose in front of the infamous UT tower, even some of my family knew I wanted to go there, to see their shock when there was a University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) flag at my graduation party.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I became bitter, and that was not a great start to my first semester.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

My first semester was not ideal. I was thrown into a harsh journalism class, and I had to take on the role of our Multimedia editor, Sebastian Perez-Navarro, for a whole semester. I can tell you with confidence that you will not see me as a multimedia editor anytime soon.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

During\u00a0finals\u00a0week, I got two hours of sleep every day. For my last final, I studied for six hours straight because I had only realized two weeks prior that I missed about 20 readings, 10 documentaries,\u00a0<\/p>\n

That day of the final, I\u00a0only had\u00a0a medium Dunkin\u2019 iced coffee, a venti Starbucks sugar cookie\u00a0latte\u00a0and a confetti bundt cake in my system. I wondered why all of that came out of my system before I took my oral exam via Zoom.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Embarrassingly enough, after my oral exam, my mom came into my room right after\u00a0and I collapsed into her arms.\u00a0The disappointment I had in myself was unbearable. Bawling my eyes out, I was expressing my disappointment in myself\u00a0since I bombed my final and had a 73 in that class already.\u00a0I was so scared to admit that I\u00a0possibly failed\u00a0my class, but to my surprise,\u00a0my mom was nothing but proud of me\u00a0for finally admitting that I struggle.\u00a0All I could think\u00a0about\u00a0that moment was that I was a failure. I had never failed a class, and now,\u00a0what\u2019s\u00a0supposed to be my easiest semester, I did just that.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But that made me realize something. Did I ever give myself room to acknowledge my hard work? A break? Or even that this is my first ever semester where\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0already a junior but also an editor for a newspaper? Of course not, because I was unfair and bitter to myself. I was there my first semester to prove to people that I am still better,\u00a0but\u00a0I needed to take accountability for what I was doing to myself\u00a0and\u00a0realize that not everything is a competition.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now I am better than ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Starting my second semester, I have finally gotten into the groove of things, I am finally gaining confidence in myself and my work. I am finally forming good habits\u00a0like\u00a0writing things down in my planner and\u00a0making time\u00a0for myself. I am also now\u00a0anticipating\u00a0a trip to Denton, Texas,\u00a0where I get to compete in newspaper layout. I made the dean\u2019s list\u00a0and turns out\u00a0the class\u00a0I\u00a0supposedly failed, I passed with a B.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I did not do all of this by\u00a0myself. I had the best mom, brother,\u00a0grandparents\u00a0and friends who never failed to make me smile and never let me put\u00a0myself down. To my best friend (You know who you are), even when we fight, are busy, or are both\u00a0just tired, you have always been my inspiration and help toward success. You are the key to my motivation to stay successful alongside you. I dedicate my improvement and this story to you. Thank you.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mia Colmenero is layout editor and may be reached at\u202f[email\u00a0protected]<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 Iziah Moreno Second semester in, and I\u2019ve\u00a0reflected.\u00a0\u00a0 Since kindergarten, I\u00a0was\u00a0not a perfect student. Shy, A-B honor roll,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-188661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}