paytonh
Sep 25, 2012
Undergraduate / 'Perfect high school socialite'; hardships, challenges, that have shaped my life [2]
Prompt: There may be personal information you want considered as part of your admissions application. Write an essay describing that information. You might include exceptional hardships, challenges, or opportunities that have shaped or impacted your abilities or academic credentials, personal responsibilities, exceptional achievements or talents, educational goals, or way in which you might contribute to an institution committed to creating a diverse learning environment.
Movies portray high school as a time to hang out with your friends, rather than a place to learn and prepare for your future. They make passing notes, skipping class, and maintaining a perfect social life appear as the ideal high school life, when what really should be happening for students is paying attention in class, doing your homework, studying and maintaining your grades. Intelligence is what matters most, and that is what I didn't realize as a new freshman in high school. I wanted my life to be a movie, I wanted to fit in, and seem "cool", that was success to me and I waited far too long to realize how wrong this really was.
I dedicated my freshman and sophomore years to becoming the perfect high school socialite instead of the intelligent girl with a respectable GPA that I could have and should have been. I would stay up late talking to friends, not doing my homework, sleep in class and not pay attention to the teacher, and occasionally not go to class at all. I preferred these trivial activities as opposed to excelling and creating a successful life for myself, and because of this, my grades began to plunder down. My parents and teachers became concerned with my future and started asking questions and to answer them I probably used every excuse in the book, when realistically I was just lazy, apathetic and undeniably immature. I had absolutely no idea what kind of impact this was having on my future and I needed a serious wake up call.
That message reached me the summer before junior year began. After a lot of serious talks with my parents about my future, it finally occurred to me that to get where you want to be in life, you have to work for it, and that was something that I wasn't doing. I suddenly knew that everything needed to change, and I started that change immediately. I put myself into AP and Dual Credit courses, I began doing every assignment I received and studied hard every night. When my first progress report came in, I got to see the effects of my new and improved attitude, and I was ecstatic. My hard work had really paid off. My grades were high, my parents were more than proud of me, and I felt great about what I had accomplished and myself. I had jumpstarted my life and established a path to lead to the thriving future I created for myself.
Since then I have followed that path and feel I am only improving. I work hard at everything I do and will continue to do so throughout the rest of my life. I could not be any happier with the current life I am living and all of the opportunities I will have allowed myself to have in the future.
Prompt: There may be personal information you want considered as part of your admissions application. Write an essay describing that information. You might include exceptional hardships, challenges, or opportunities that have shaped or impacted your abilities or academic credentials, personal responsibilities, exceptional achievements or talents, educational goals, or way in which you might contribute to an institution committed to creating a diverse learning environment.
Movies portray high school as a time to hang out with your friends, rather than a place to learn and prepare for your future. They make passing notes, skipping class, and maintaining a perfect social life appear as the ideal high school life, when what really should be happening for students is paying attention in class, doing your homework, studying and maintaining your grades. Intelligence is what matters most, and that is what I didn't realize as a new freshman in high school. I wanted my life to be a movie, I wanted to fit in, and seem "cool", that was success to me and I waited far too long to realize how wrong this really was.
I dedicated my freshman and sophomore years to becoming the perfect high school socialite instead of the intelligent girl with a respectable GPA that I could have and should have been. I would stay up late talking to friends, not doing my homework, sleep in class and not pay attention to the teacher, and occasionally not go to class at all. I preferred these trivial activities as opposed to excelling and creating a successful life for myself, and because of this, my grades began to plunder down. My parents and teachers became concerned with my future and started asking questions and to answer them I probably used every excuse in the book, when realistically I was just lazy, apathetic and undeniably immature. I had absolutely no idea what kind of impact this was having on my future and I needed a serious wake up call.
That message reached me the summer before junior year began. After a lot of serious talks with my parents about my future, it finally occurred to me that to get where you want to be in life, you have to work for it, and that was something that I wasn't doing. I suddenly knew that everything needed to change, and I started that change immediately. I put myself into AP and Dual Credit courses, I began doing every assignment I received and studied hard every night. When my first progress report came in, I got to see the effects of my new and improved attitude, and I was ecstatic. My hard work had really paid off. My grades were high, my parents were more than proud of me, and I felt great about what I had accomplished and myself. I had jumpstarted my life and established a path to lead to the thriving future I created for myself.
Since then I have followed that path and feel I am only improving. I work hard at everything I do and will continue to do so throughout the rest of my life. I could not be any happier with the current life I am living and all of the opportunities I will have allowed myself to have in the future.
