College Admissions Essay: The First Day Of High School

Most of us want to be going downstream, to be caught in the tide of schooling and schedules and let it carry us to our next destination in life. I’m the same way. Why strive to forge your own path or struggle with new, uncharted territory when a clear path, a proven path, is right in front of your own eyes, waiting for you? During middle school, this was the prevailing philosophy; just ride the current. It wasn’t long until I realized a strategy of letting the river of others’ efforts carry me would not work, however. It was the first day of High School. I was already young for my grade level, so being on the lowest rung of the social hierarchy did nothing to help me out. Luckily, I was pretty tall for my age as well, up in the 98th percentile, so I blessed in the way that people thought I was older than I actually was. Of course, appearances didn’t get me as far as I wanted. There are almost two thousand students from every walk of life at Wayne High. Every race, personality, clique, style even has its own group and representatives. Which one would I fit into? It was like a passing memory, or a dream after you wake up. Every expectation I had of how easy or the same high …show more content…
However, this stuck with me for the rest of that relatively uneventful first day and to current day as well. I wondered why trying to go above and beyond was worth the effort if you could easily fail? What was the better option, to stand out or fit in? Perhaps, at the time, I overreacted. I was just a lost in the foreign environment I confidently waltzed into. Looking back, however, I learned something about myself. To get to class that day I had to fight upstream. In my head, I had to swim upstream to keep myself from breaking down over the blunder I made. Getting anywhere worth going meant having to go upstream time to time. Even if the destination wasn’t the expected