Counterproductive by Ella

Counterproductive by Ella - July 2023 Scholarship Essay

All I can remember ever since I was a little girl was getting into the college of my dreams. I bought T-Shirts, visited the campus, had fits on my kitchen counter over a letter grade B (I was in the fourth grade), and so much more. I strived to be competitive, resourceful, ambitious, and someone who could prove everyone wrong. While most found my dreams endearing, some people's opinions were borderline condescending. My biggest failure in my academic career was finding out that my dreams, once curated for my future and for that little girl, twisted themselves into a monster of revenge. I found that my mindset of "I'll show them," killed my dreams rather than nurtured them.

Focusing my attention and molding my dreams into a snub of petty victory ruined all ambition I had and drained my once academic prowess into something that I was slighted out of. I heard the voices in my head of everyone telling me I would fail and learned to piece together the notes, the influxes, and melodies and harmonize them into a hymn for "success." What I once loved, I came to resent. I grew tired of the classes because they were what I needed to prove myself to others rather than what I needed to accomplish my dreams. I learned that failing was not an option. I learned how to have a deplorable attitude for losing over a good attitude one for winning. I lived for others and I turned my dreams, an integral part of myself, into pieces for everyone else.

Now, when I look at my goals and future, I only keep in mind what benefits me the most. What can I achieve through the power and faith I have in myself? Who can I be without the restrictions of my pride? How do I integrate humility into a competitive world? I want my dreams to be for myself. I want to accomplish them while basking the knowledge that I did it all for no one else. My success will be built off of my hard work, not someone else's doubt. It was not an easy journey, learning to live my academic career personally rather than for society and my parents. But I found that when I did, I reached a beginning that was falsely subbed - the finish line. And when I reach the end to my beginning, I will glow knowing it was myself, for myself, that I won this small victory.

My success does not stop at what college I get into or who I successfully proved wrong, it is proving myself right and living up to the potential I know myself worthy of. It is ever-changing.

I had to learn how to fail in order to win, but most of all I learned that...
There is no victory in winning for someone else.