The most influential person in my life by Chelsie

The most influential person in my life by Chelsie - March 2023 Scholarship Essay

When my grandpa passed I thought of this saying a lot. "When you smile at the world, the world will smile back at you" Initially, I thought about how I would never hear those words again and how heartbroken I was that I lost the greatest person in my entire life and my best friend. As the loss got easier to process I dove deep into that meaning. I finally realized that the saying is something that I would totally expect from him. He was the most positive person in the entire world. I seriously never heard one negative thing from him. He constantly gave me the perfect advice and told me exactly what I needed to hear while I was on one of my rants to him. He never said anything to bring anyone down and he managed to gain respect from people without asking for it. He was the type of person who you would instantly respect by the way he carried himself and by the way he would just talk to you and listen to every single word that would come out of your mouth. Whether you knew him for two minutes, or a lifetime, you were never treated any differently unless you showed that he couldn't trust you. And even then, the way he would treat you was never negative. He treated everyone like he had known them for his entire life and lit up every single room he would walk into. He was the most positive person I could ever know and I chose to write about him in this in order to tell more about him because he truly deserves this and so much more.
I know that all of that was describing him as a person and not describing how any of this would affect me, so let me explain. My grandpa saying this to me was not the only time I would ever get really good advice from him. I got constant advice and constant motivation in every single thing I was interested in. He pushed me to be the best person I could possibly be and turned me into the person that I am today and he will forever be the person that I reflect on when coming to life decisions in the future. My grandpa was actually the person who got me to start most of the things in my life. The main sports I played were started because I told him I was interested and he told my mom to sign me up or he would disown her. Obviously, that would actually happen but it did work. At the present time, I'm still in two of those sports and I absolutely love them. Believe it or not, I'm even the Captain and have been for the past two years in one of those sports!
For a little backstory on what I'm going to talk about next, I used to have one klondike bar, the ice cream, every single night with my grandpa. I would take my fork and I would peel back the chocolate and eat all of it and then eat the ice cream inside. My grandpa thought this was the weirdest but most fascinating thing about me for some reason. Meanwhile, I thought it was normal. Anyways, somehow he got the idea that I should be a surgeon. He said that the way I “dissect” my klondike bar would relate to surgery in some ways. I didn’t ever understand it but then when I went back to school a couple of days later, I researched surgery and was hooked on it. From 6th grade, all the way until my freshman year I was dead set on being a surgeon. Then one day, my grandpa had fallen pretty hard. I had gone into his room for my klondike bar like normal and he was laying there saying he fell and was dizzy. He had this huge gash on his forehead and asked if I would cut off the loose skin and patch him up. He said that it would be practice for when I was planning on eventually being a surgeon. I almost threw up. I couldn't even look at it. If I couldn't look at this gash on my grandfather's head then who in the world would I be able to put my hands in a human body? My grandpa and I very quickly decided that maybe surgery wasn't the best route. Then he suggested one day that maybe radiology would be a good fit. I wanted to be in the medical field without having to touch anything super bloody and gross. He also said that since I had broken so many bones I might as well have already had my training to be a radiologist. And guess what? Guess who's studying Biology and already registered for a medical school when they're done with college? I am. I've never wanted anything so bad in my life. I want this career. I'd do anything for it, and I wouldn't have even thought of it if it weren't for him.