Keys to the Kingdom by Alexandra

Keys to the Kingdom by Alexandra - August 2016 Scholarship Essay

Growing up, I always envisioned high school as this ominous, dark, brooding beast. And its pointy teeth, sharp claws, and hypnotic stare were silently waiting for me in honors chemistry. A rather absurd nervousness, yes, but my apprehensiveness of the course didn’t cease until a good two months into the class.

This huge fear of taking chemistry was ignited once I realized that it would be both a demanding, and challenging, class. I am, and have been since my elementary school days, a straight-A student. But now, my precious GPA was at stake.

That being said, I was a ball of nerves walking in that first day. It was the start of my junior year, the most important year of all high school, and all those childish worries swarmed my senses. To make matters worse, my teacher was well known around school for his rigorous teaching style and holding the highest of expectations for all of his students. At the sound of the bell, we were bombarded with custom classroom rules and an hour-long lecture on the fact that this might be the very first time some of us don’t pass a class, but that it was not only okay, but expected.

Talk about a stress overload.

My anxiety mildly simmered the first few weeks since the class was focused around lab safety and other precautionary techniques, concepts I was already fairly familiar with. But the tension came back full swing, seeping deep into my bones, when the real material began shortly after.

As a high school student aspiring to one day become a doctor, I knew coming into it, that chemistry was a necessary milestone. One I had no other option but to excel at. The pressure that had developed on my chest began to ease as I took note of how quickly I picked it up, able to explore outside ideas with those same key concepts, allowing me to “think outside the box,” something entirely new to me.

If I could depict chemistry in just a few words, it’d be: intricately complex, yet beautifully simple. How was I to know that the very topic that scared me most, would be the one that I’d fall in love with? As we swerved in and out of interconnected units, exploring concepts such as stoichiometry and kinetics, my fascination only grew.

Away went my fear of failing the class, quickly replaced with an active eagerness to soak up as much knowledge as I could. There was no way of me knowing that chemistry held the answer to so many questions of both physical and life science. That it was, quite literally the basis for so many different branches of science. I submerged myself into the course, studying harder than I ever had before for a class, and forming the greatest respect I’ve ever had for a teacher. If not for his encouragement and overall love for the subject, I would not have been as motivated to prove to him that his teaching was serving a far greater purpose than a mere paycheck.

As cliché as it may sound, there was not a single day where I didn’t look forward to the class. Nomenclature, gas laws, and electrons. The periodic table, mole, and solutions. Molecular shapes, chemical reactions, and Boyle. All distinct aspects of the class that managed to play a role in the teaching of the next unit. I absorbed as much as I possibly could, passing any previous level of readiness I felt for a class.

This newfound passion propelled me to dive in with chart-topping effort, to develop routine study habits, and actually pay attention to “mindless” homework. I discovered the real value of hard work, and enjoyed its fruits in one of my (now) all-time favorite classes. The work ethic I created for this class soon began blending with the ones I had for other subjects, transforming them into one that mirrored my determination behind mastering chemistry. It catalyzed an academic revolution inside of me. I set higher standards, and worked obsessively until they were met.

However, I didn’t notice that my teacher was keeping tabs on my incessant questions and high test scores. Yes, I wanted to prove that I took his class seriously, but because it felt like an unspoken responsibility on my part to make him proud. But there are no words to describe the feelings evoked deep inside of me when I was given the “Honors Chemistry Student of the Year” award. To know that my dedication was cherished, and that the most accomplished teacher I had ever had believed in me. The class, its teacher, and my award were all, collectively, a major highlight of my high school career.

So, turns out the beast was never a beast after all. But a guardian of the gates that would unlock my future. And he smiles down upon me as I venture toward the lively world of pre-medicine, embarking on a journey that will surely alter the rest of my life.