Undergraduate / "I learned to appreciate history" - Personal Statement [5]

Okay this is my first time posting here, and I'm looking for some help on my personal statement.
For the SUNY App..
Please provide additional information (up to 250 words) that will help us better understand your academic performance.
(I'm also going to be a math teacher. But I hope writing about history for this would be alright..)

Throughout my high school years I have always strived for the best grades I could achieve, and the grades that I received did not come easy to me. My weakest subject when I entered high school was social studies. I always found it very hard to remember all of the dates, wars, and historical figures in this class. At times, the memorizing would be too overwhelming and I did not care to learn about history. My attitude was very, "Who cares about what happened 200 years ago anyways?" My outlook of history could not have been more wrong. During high school, I started to realize that history is an essential subject to comprehend and be knowledgeable about, so I began to appreciate the subject more. By the time junior year came around when I took United States history, I could finally say, "I enjoy history class." My teacher thoroughly explained the material, used notes that were easy to understand, and prepared activities that reinforced what we were learning. This teacher also inspired me to become a teacher myself. He made the class fun and educational at the same time. At the end of this course, I received a 98 on the United States history Regents exam and an overall class average of 94; I couldn't be happier with these grades. Receiving these grades in United States history has shown me that being dedicated, hard-working, and determined really does pay off.

This is also very close to 250 words, any way I could trim it down?