Undergraduate / 'Failure is common' - UNC supplement [3]

Hey guys this is due tonight, and I just started working on it late last night. I procrastinated a lot and I am not proud of my final piece but any help would be greatly appreciated.

Failure is a common aspect of human life. We all fail at one point or another, and sometimes, we can strengthen ourselves through those failures. During the 8th grade, I was faced with the grueling task of applying to a high school. Most students would not describe applying to high school as a "grueling" task, but in my case, I either got accepted to the magnet school that I was applying to or went to my local high school, which had a bad reputation in both academics, and conduct. I feared going to the local high school because I thought that I would fall behind my peers academically, and because I didn't think I would be able to relate to, or befriend, anyone there. Using the consequences of failure as my motivation, I began writing my essay for the magnet school with great tenaciousness. I worked for hours on the essay because of its importance to my admission to the school. After a couple of days, I was finally finished with both, my essay, and my application. I sent it in the next day and waited. A couple weeks passed by before I got a letter from the school. Filled with great anxiousness, and excitement, I opened the letter. To my dismay, it was a rejection letter. As soon as I saw the word "unfortunately", I began to tear up, and felt despondent. I had failed many times before this, but I never succumbed to it before. This time it was different, not only did I have more at stake, but I also knew that it would be a life changing failure with strong consequences. After hours of comforting by my parents, I finally stopped weeping at my failure and decided to move on. I came up with a plan. My plan was to study and work adamantly throughout my 9th grade year so that I could apply to the magnet school again, and get accepted.

Months went by and the first day of High School had arrived. I was more nervous than ever before that day. I arrived at the school 20 minutes before the bell rang, so I decided to just stand outside the building that my first class was in. As I walked there, I saw, to my astonishment, many of my friends from middle school. I started talking to them and it turned out that we had a lot of classes together. As the day passed by and as I started to meet more people, and see all of my classes I started to doubt the rumors I had heard. Almost everyone I met was very friendly with me and not pugnacious as I imagined. In terms of academics, the school was again a lot better than rumored; I was already getting homework on the first day! I threw out my previous plan to apply to the magnet school. As time went by, I grew affectionate to the school, its staff, and its students. Four years later, I am applying to colleges from the same school that I once thought as 'the worst thing to ever happen to me'. In my 4 years since the rejection letter, I have learned that it is not where you are, but where you want to go that matters. I learned that my position in life shouldn't ever get me down; I can always work hard and fix it.

Btw even though UNC says approximately 500 words, meaning I can go over 500, I hit about 570 words in this essay. So if someone could help me trim a couple words that would also be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.