Undergraduate / I had never been so sure of myself in my whole life. Rutgers essay [4]

hi im an international student from nigeria and this is my rutgers essay
prompt:
Rutgers requires that you provide a short essay that is your original work. Please reflect on what you consider to be an important personal experience related to your talents, interests, or commitments. Using this experience, please tell us what you learned about yourself. How will this experience prepare you for success at Rutgers?

I had never been so sure of myself in my whole life. I sat in the on a cushioned chair in the exam room as if I owned the world. The coordinator authorized us to begin and I skipped to the physics section. I was never great at physics but I found myself answering questions with ease. My confidence level increased with each subsequent question. The same went for the other sections of the exam. After two hours of testing, I stepped out of the exam center radiating confidence. I thought I had just aced the Universities Matriculation Examination aka JAMB and would have no problem getting into a Nigerian university for my gap year. To my greatest surprise, my result showed otherwise.

Staring at my computer screen blankly, I found myself re-checking my results continuously to see if there was some mistake. My score was barely above average. Admittedly, I am no genius but I had never received such a low grade in my entire academic career. I was still searching for the error when I realized how difficult it would be explaining this result to my parents. They had already been fondly calling me an undergraduate. I eventually mustered up the courage to do so one evening when the JAMB exam was headlining the local news.

My parents gave me such an excruciatingly long lecture that night that I was so exhausted by the time they were through. They had given me the task of finding out what went wrong which seemed impossible to me at that time because in my head, there was a mix up and the exam board had given me another person's result. I pushed that issue to the back of my mind and settled down to read for my final exams. I pulled out my elaborate study timetable that spanned from March to May and I noticed that I had not allotted a single hour of study for the JAMB exam. That was how I knew what went wrong.

The same problem that caused me not to do as well as I should also blinded me from realizing my fault. I was over-confident and assumed that the JAMB exam would be a breeze since it coincided with my final exams. I thought that I did not need to pay any special attention to it. I remembered only studying for the JAMB exam if I had free time. In the past, I had gotten high scores on tests I hardly studied for and I let it get to my head but this was a wake-up call. It was definitely never going to happen again. Apart from learning an extremely valuable lesson, I was also grateful to have a reasonable answer for my parents.

My failure to gain admission into a Nigerian university made me realize nothing is to be taken for granted. With this knowledge, I intend to make use of all the many resources available to me and be the best version of myself I can possibly be at an educationally conducive environment such as Rutgers.