To Be Determined by aaron

To Be Determined by aaron - November 2018 Scholarship Essay

My senior quote would never represent me. How can I express myself in a single quote after only being alive for 18 years, actually aware of the world for maybe 15 and really only explored who I am as a person for 10 years. I have so many more years to live so tying myself down to a lone sentence seems counter intuitive when society tells me to be whoever I want to be. When, in ten, fifteen, twenty, years my thoughts on the world and myself are going to change. Nothing today is how it will be in the future, so why should a single quote I wrote as a high school senior be applicable to my life then?
I have lived my life up until this point, relatively pain free, if you don’t count the 4 months I was in and out of the hospital my junior year. I woke up on Sunday, November 5th with a slight discomfort in my right side. The pain was not alarming until I was nearly throwing up in the bathroom with a fever that had come and gone throughout the day. Heading to an urgent care, I was slumped in the passenger seat of my moms car. Making our way to the examination room, I was told I had two kidney stones that would in fact pass, I would just have to deal with a lot of pain. It was not a lot of pain. There was more pain than I could ever fathom. Two days after that urgent care visit, I had yet to pass either of the two rocks stuck inside me and I was unable to keep any food or water down. I was quickly becoming dehydrated so I was rushed to the Hospital. Long story short, I had more than two kidney stones. I had four trying to pass and one three in stone stuck in my left kidney. After 8 surgeries I was stone free for five months until I needed another surgery in august to remove a few fragments. How do I capture all of that in a senior quote? Saying “High school is like a kidney stone: It is hard to pass, but eventually you will get through it,” doesn’t seem that representative of my life, although I will be dealing with kidney stones forever.
My senior quote could never represent me. When I meet my wife, when I start a family, when I watch as the world turns around wont slow down, my view on life will change and thus my view on life will change too. There is not a sentence in the world that could explain my life today or tomorrow or in ten years, neither is there a sentence for anyone else. My life will never stop moving forward, I can only look back at who I was during the events that shaped my life such as the kidney stone surgeries or starting high school or moving to a new state. My life will continue to change so the only quote I am putting down in my year book is, “To be determined.”