Prompt 5: Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.
I couldn't believe my senses - I was at an airport, with actual airplanes in it. I had won a scholarship from the Singapore government for a 4 year high school diploma, and there were nine of us from all over the country. I could not help but feel like a kid; almost all the others were a year (or two) older than me! I can still hear my 14-year old self think: These are my batchmates? Dear lord, some of them even have mustaches. Maybe if I jump high enough I can touch one of their Easter Island heads. Why are the stairs so tall? Oh look, they're moving.
To this day being in that Airport makes me feel completely Lilliputian. I remember entering the towering metal tube, wondering what was inside it. I had been breezy and untroubled so far, lost in the joys of discovery; yet as the airplane taxied onto the runway, it hit me: This wasn't a summer camp. I wasn't going to be home for a long time.
Home for me was a small farming village in South India. Everyone knew me and I knew everybody. I'd never thought about leaving before - I had no reason; No one ever left unless they had a very good reason. Yet I was packing one day and gone the next, the whole village seeing me off at the Railway Station. They had high hopes for me; they had never seen the outside world as I was about to.
I had come from a small world, and it felt humbling and strangely overwhelming to be introduced to the real one.
Nothing in my life had prepared me for this, but as I looked down and saw nothing but blue, I knew something had changed. I was shy but unafraid. Shy of the world where I knew not a single person beyond his name, yet unafraid of the high expectations I felt on the shoulders of the small group of children that sat around me. My world was bigger, but I knew I owed it to the men and women back home to use the knowledge my scholarship, my foray into another world would provide, use it to help my country and through it, all others.
Stepping off the plane, there was a bittersweet moment when I knew I had crossed a line. I was now a global citizen, and it was a phrase that did not distinguish between boys and men. Suddenly there was a lot to do. The school I was going to would open up unexplored vistas, show me faces unseen, miles untraveled. I could do it all. My first day of school despite being the youngest in my class, I couldn't help but feel like a man among boys. I had travelled three thousand miles to get there, and my journey as an adult had just begun.
I still wonder about the road not taken, about what I might have become had I not been rushed into adulthood as I was. Perhaps I wasn't. Perhaps there is no single moment of transition from childhood to adulthood, perhaps they aren't entirely distinct. All I can say for sure is that I began that day in India, feeling like a kid hanging on his mother's saree. Lying on my bed that night in my room in Singapore, I knew I was not a kid anymore.
Children wait their whole lives to be adults, and adults wish their whole lives to be children again. There comes a point in all our lives when we simply stop wondering about adults and their bohemian ways and realize that we've become one of them. Not all of us can pin it to a single moment, but mine was in the seats of an airbus-A320 taking off into the night with a 14 year old who was the first in his family to ever cross the ocean.
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I realise the structure is somewhat unorthodox, but I can't seem to distance myself from the material and look at it objectively. Any comments, however harsh, are welcome. Please let me know what you think, and if you could also suggest an alternate way of putting things, that'd be awesome. Thanks a bunch!
I couldn't believe my senses - I was at an airport, with actual airplanes in it. I had won a scholarship from the Singapore government for a 4 year high school diploma, and there were nine of us from all over the country. I could not help but feel like a kid; almost all the others were a year (or two) older than me! I can still hear my 14-year old self think: These are my batchmates? Dear lord, some of them even have mustaches. Maybe if I jump high enough I can touch one of their Easter Island heads. Why are the stairs so tall? Oh look, they're moving.
To this day being in that Airport makes me feel completely Lilliputian. I remember entering the towering metal tube, wondering what was inside it. I had been breezy and untroubled so far, lost in the joys of discovery; yet as the airplane taxied onto the runway, it hit me: This wasn't a summer camp. I wasn't going to be home for a long time.
Home for me was a small farming village in South India. Everyone knew me and I knew everybody. I'd never thought about leaving before - I had no reason; No one ever left unless they had a very good reason. Yet I was packing one day and gone the next, the whole village seeing me off at the Railway Station. They had high hopes for me; they had never seen the outside world as I was about to.
I had come from a small world, and it felt humbling and strangely overwhelming to be introduced to the real one.
Nothing in my life had prepared me for this, but as I looked down and saw nothing but blue, I knew something had changed. I was shy but unafraid. Shy of the world where I knew not a single person beyond his name, yet unafraid of the high expectations I felt on the shoulders of the small group of children that sat around me. My world was bigger, but I knew I owed it to the men and women back home to use the knowledge my scholarship, my foray into another world would provide, use it to help my country and through it, all others.
Stepping off the plane, there was a bittersweet moment when I knew I had crossed a line. I was now a global citizen, and it was a phrase that did not distinguish between boys and men. Suddenly there was a lot to do. The school I was going to would open up unexplored vistas, show me faces unseen, miles untraveled. I could do it all. My first day of school despite being the youngest in my class, I couldn't help but feel like a man among boys. I had travelled three thousand miles to get there, and my journey as an adult had just begun.
I still wonder about the road not taken, about what I might have become had I not been rushed into adulthood as I was. Perhaps I wasn't. Perhaps there is no single moment of transition from childhood to adulthood, perhaps they aren't entirely distinct. All I can say for sure is that I began that day in India, feeling like a kid hanging on his mother's saree. Lying on my bed that night in my room in Singapore, I knew I was not a kid anymore.
Children wait their whole lives to be adults, and adults wish their whole lives to be children again. There comes a point in all our lives when we simply stop wondering about adults and their bohemian ways and realize that we've become one of them. Not all of us can pin it to a single moment, but mine was in the seats of an airbus-A320 taking off into the night with a 14 year old who was the first in his family to ever cross the ocean.
---
I realise the structure is somewhat unorthodox, but I can't seem to distance myself from the material and look at it objectively. Any comments, however harsh, are welcome. Please let me know what you think, and if you could also suggest an alternate way of putting things, that'd be awesome. Thanks a bunch!
