Undergraduate / 'old family albums' - risk, experience Common Application [3]

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

When I rustle through old family albums, I see a disheartening lack of childhood photographs because I remember that I took the initiative on destroying them. The motive was not to hide the typical 'baby fat' or the embarrassing shots of me completely naked in the bathtub, it was to hide a monster called Hemangioma. To doctors, it was an "abnormal accumulation of small blood vessels," a benign nose tumor that my parents had nothing to worry about. To me, it was malignant; it established the term "self-conscious" into my vocabulary at the mere age of five. Even after the tumor removal, I spent a majority of my life feeling worthless and most of all, ugly.

In middle school, I began to find myself. I was hiding in student government and my best friend was my point and shoot camera. Everything in those teenage years was surprisingly calm; however, in every blue moon, the monster came out to greet me. It would subtly arrive in conversations from peers wondering why my nose was particularly small and round, or why, with further examination, my nostrils were slightly uneven. Even though these questions were simply curiosities, they were detrimental to my esteem.

The dagger in the stomach at every remark of my physical appearance undoubtedly disheartened me, but at this age, it also struck a different chord. It pushed me to question if I was more than a couple of abnormal blood vessels that consumed my past. Therefore, when high school started, I began searching for the answer.

I found the answer in my first photography award and in each compassionate teacher that said, "I'm proud of you, Ann."It lied between the written text in my paperback novel of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and inside my worn-down, leather gloves used at community clean-up projects. The answer was in the morning announcements the last day of my junior year, congratulating me for winning Student Government president, after unfortunately losing the class position my previous year.

It took 13 years for me to learn that I am more than a past appearance. I am the optimistic leader that tries again, even after losing an election; I am an avid learner that turns previous vices into virtues; I am a daughter that continually attempts to better herself day after day to invite smiles on her parents' faces. I am Ann and I opened the closet to fight the monster called Hemangioma. Every day, I persevere to fight all the monsters that cross my path and show each passerby that I am worth something.

And if you let me, [college name], I will continue to show you my worthiness and my determination to fight your monsters while fighting mine.