Law of the Jungle by Anirudh

Law of the Jungle by Anirudh - September 2014 Scholarship Essay

If there’s one thing you can be sure about this world, it’s that it will be different tomorrow. Change is the law of the universe. People you see today will be gone tomorrow. Friends will be in your life and then suddenly vanish. Life becomes progressively harder; day by day, year by year. However, perhaps nothing is so drastic a change as the transition from a high school senior to a college freshman.

I come from a school whose senior class numbers about 25. College will be so foreign that it might as well be alien. I will have to transition from the small, sheltered community of a prep school to the chaotic hustle that is a college town. The student population will not be the only difference. College suddenly opens an entire possibility of freedom I couldn’t even consider before. I get to choose what classes I want to take. I get to choose what I want to eat. I get to choose when I go to bed.

This leap of freedom yields only to a great endowment of responsibility. I will have to adjust to being responsible for myself and for my education. I’ll have to wake myself up and drag my own body to classes. Nobody will care whether or not I’ve eaten, if I’ve showered (Okay, maybe they would), or if I’ve had enough sleep. I will be completely on my own.

The trait that’s most important to success in college isn’t athleticism, or intelligence. So many extremely talented seniors have dropped out of their first semester of college only because they failed to adapt to the burdens of freedom. Without the strict structure laid out by the parent police, these new college freshman wilt under what they view as liberating circumstances. They fail to live up to their responsibilities because nobody cares whether or not they work hard. Adaptability and versatility are the most important traits when adjusting to this new environment.

I cannot resist this change to my life and must be ready to adapt. I have to be able to confront these strange new circumstances with a flexible aspect. And throughout all this change, both in the environment and in myself, I must not lose sight of my final goal.

The new lifestyle will not be the only change. In college, I will be subject to many different cultures, philosophies, and faiths. While I must remain adaptable to these new ideas, I must not lose sight of who I am. Adaptability can only go so far as to change aspects of yourself, not the essence of who you are.

What animals can be found on almost every single continent? Ants. Flies. Cockroaches. Seagulls. And humans. Unflattering comparisons aside, what do they all have in common? Their ability to adapt to almost all of the diverse environments Earth has to offer. For the dog-eat dog system of Darwinian evolution, and the similar rules that govern college life, adaptability is paramount. As I unfold this new chapter of my life, I tread a fine line to adulthood. I must be prepared to change the way I live in order to stay alive in the vicious jungle of a university.