This Girl's Life by Allyson

This Girl's Life by Allyson - October 2019 Scholarship Essay

It is often said that our failures create opportunities for our greatest successes. If we choose to overcome the challenge that has been handed to us, we are able to progress above and beyond where we were before the obstacle arrived. Wither or not Tobias Wolff knows the saying, he knows the concept.
In Wolff’s memoir, This Boy’s Life, he talks of his childhood and the challenges he faced. Raised mainly by his mother, and later by an abusive step-father, his childhood is not a tale of overwhelming love and compassion. It’s a tale of overwhelming doubt and hardship. As he moves from place to place he easily bends into different roles, none of them creating a healthy lifestyle or one he is able to sustain. Even after the final pages of the book are turned, his life is a confusing configuration of twisting paths, none of them seeming to lead to a better life. It is not until the reader reaches the book jacket, the author’s biography, that Wolff’s failures become successes.
Tobias Wolff went on to study at Stanford University and led their creative writing department. He received a National Medal of Arts from President Barak Obama. He has become a well know author after writing numerous books, not to mention the one I hold in my hands. How did a man who forged his transcript and recommendation letters to get into a prep school attend Stanford University? How did a man who spent his days stealing and taking drugs receive a National Medal of Arts?
He did not become frightened by the audacity he had created. He did not become shaken by the depth of the hole he was in. I believe in writing his memoir, facing and displaying the challenges he faced and brought upon himself, he was able to reorient his life. I am inspired by his constant perseverance and discipline to rise into an author out of nothing. I have not meet him, he has not been by my side encouraging me, but in my studies- the tests I find impossible to succeed at, the homework that overwhelms me, the scores I don’t find myself being able to reach- I see Tobias Wolff. I see how he turned from his greatest failures and created his great success.