The Thirteenth Grader by Anuja

The Thirteenth Grader by Anuja - April 2019 Scholarship Essay

Hi, my name is Anuja, and I am a thirteenth grader.
What is the thirteenth grade? It is exactly as it sounds, an additional year of high school, but I prefer to think of it as a secret level only unlockable through unfortunate circumstance. In my situation, there is no blame to cast, no sensationalized storyline. I put my faith in the certifiably trustworthy, the doctor who is thought to always know best. Though sometimes, no matter how sincerely they speak, the doctor is mistaken. Sometimes, patients fall through the cracks, as I did.
Through middle school, I was a model student and coasted without a problem. There was no reason to suspect that I should have any trouble in my freshman year, and so I began by taking difficult classes, studying hard, and selecting all my future Honors and AP courses. Additionally, I was playing soccer for both my club and school team and participating in DECA.
From the outside, I appeared unperturbed, but once I returned from soccer practice and rushed behind closed doors, my cool exterior cracked. Even after running miles on end, there was not a moment to breathe. I flung myself onto my bed without a care for hygiene, and still in my sticky, sweat-soaked jersey, I studied furiously, breaking only when the hunger pangs became unbearable. As I shoveled food down my throat without even tasting it, I sobbed freely to release the torrent of tension that had built up throughout the day. The relief crying brought was brief because I would hastily return to the mountain of homework awaiting me.
To others, it was a hill, but for me, it was like ascending Everest. While my peers walked a hundred feet to the top, I climbed the same grueling distance and found myself just 28,929 feet shy of the peak. For all my endeavors, I simply could not focus and retain information, and the advances I made at the end of every hour seemed negligible. My natural facility for and understanding of the subjects, which had carried me through middle school, could no longer conceal the excessive time it took for me to concentrate and commit concepts to memory. When everyone I knew was dreaming, I was steeling myself for the hours of work still left, for the whole of tomorrow, and for the entirety of the year ahead of me.
School was harrowing, and when attending class became unbearable, I was forced to turn to professionals for help. Doctors diagnosed me with a host of inflictions and prescribed a multitude of treatments, each one different and as ineffectual as the last. Every promising solution only treated a side-effect of the problem. With each misdiagnosis, I began to lose faith, until I met with a psychiatrist who offered an unbelievably straightforward answer.
He told me I had severe ADHD, and suddenly, all the events leading up to my diagnosis made sense. With proper treatment, I finally could focus and concentrate on my studies just as my peers could. As joyous as my recovery was, I was left with a strange bitterness. Reaching where I am now took three years of my life, years that appeared an utter waste as I watched friends gain admittance to their dream colleges. I was left feeling hopeless about my future, imagining alternate storylines in a life without this three year detour, until I finally came to a realization. At some point, everyone reaches an impasse in their life, a seemingly unconquerable obstacle. Each has the choice to persevere or surrender. At long last, I was cognizant of my reality—I could sit back and watch my peers move forward with their lives, or I could undertake the difficult task of motivating myself to swim against the tide that was propelling me backwards. With that awareness, I have fought hard, pushed myself, and toiled tirelessly to finish my high school credits, catch up on standardized testing, and join the graduating class of 2019. Now, I have straight A’s, and I will be attending the University of Southern California for Electrical Engineering with a Pre-Law emphasis.
I am Anuja, I have ADHD, and the three years it took to diagnose has left me a thirteenth grader. These declarations no longer hold mournful connotations. My struggles have only pushed me forward in life because now, I accept my hurdles with the recognition that they are surmountable. The road this far has only prepared me for wherever the future leads.