Changing curriculum was an academic challenge for me

I am applying for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholarship and they require an essay on the following prompt:
Describe a recent academic challenge you have faced.
Explain how you overcame it.*

So I'm kind of writing about how since I've started college I've had to get used to a new curriculum. However, I'm stuck and I feel like what I'm writing about isn't strong. Any suggestions on as to how I can make my essay stronger, and if I should just completely change my topic.

P.S. The essay isn't finished either

When you have spent most of the last ten years of your academic life working to earn an "A" or preparing for a Comprehensive Assessment Test (or any kind of standardized testing) the moment you enter a liberal academic setting, focused solely on the intent of learning rather than passing, it is both eye opening and challenging. The challenge of adapting to a new academic curriculum, far different from the curriculum that I was indoctrinated to follow during my pre-college years, is a challenge that I have faced as a college freshman during my first semester.

From third to tenth grade, every year my English, Math and Writing classes stressed the importance of passing the FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test). They highly stressed that if you didn't pass this test the outcome would be failure and a future of remedial classes. Thus, for years my teachers centered their class structure on the sole purpose of passing these over-prioritized exams. Even without these tests it was drilled into my mind that I had to pass my classes with an "A" or a "B", nothing less. So year after year I found myself stressed and nervous, learning not for the prospect of gaining knowledge, but that of surviving through another year of school.

When I first began college at the Maryland Institute College of Art I was confronted with an entirely different approach to learning. It was bizarre to find out that my teachers did not give grades for each assignment immediately, instead they'd say "don't worry about the grade or passing, just focus on trying your best and improving". For each assignment I turned in, each artwork or each essay, the teachers would instead critique it -compliment me for what was strong about it and advise me as to how I could improve it. Never was my work labeled as an "A", or a "C", or anything. At first this seemed outrageous to me. "How would I know if I am doing well in the class or not?" I thought. "Grades have always been helpful in letting me know if I'm learning or not". However, the more I experienced this process of teaching and grading the more I realized how much better it was, and the more stress free I felt. Because I was no longer freaking out about earning a "good" grade on a scale of "A" to "F" I was able to focus more on the sole purpose of gaining knowledge that would benefit me and help me succeed.

Hi
First I have a small admin request for you - Please select the right forum when you open a thread for your essay. This was opened in Writing Feedback and I moved it to Scholarship Essays which is the most appropriate forum. This is not just a forum rule, but also helps you earn more feedbacks. :)


This first sentence and the second means almost just the same. I think you should not drag on this idea too much and with one line you should have managed saying it.

Well... you say it's been a challenge, but it seems your stress been released from the former to latter... So, nothing much has been said about for us to see it's been a challenge. If you say it was a challenge then you need to tell them what were those challenges, were you loaded with day to day assignments that you didn't experience in the previous system? or you had to keep doing homework everyday ? This does not give the impression that you had any challenges in the later system... Being exposed to a more lenient system is not actually a challeng.