"Fear is a Prison" by Emily

"Fear is a Prison" by Emily - February 2014 Scholarship Essay

One of the most important lessons I have learned over my eighteen years is how crippling fear can be if you let it take over your life. “Fear is a prison”, a quote by an unknown author, may not sound like the most inspiring quote. However, it has become a daily reminder to not let fear keep me from doing anything.

For the majority of my life, I have hidden in the shadows, trying my best not to get noticed or to stand out for anything. Although I did have a craving to be noticed for various activities, like drawing or playing my violin, I was always scared of what people would say. This fear of being judged hindered me in so many ways. Outside of art class, I rarely drew. I could hardly get through a class presentation without fumbling over my words and I tried my best not to speak out during class. However, this all changed during my ninth grade year with the help of my English teacher, Mr. Brooks.

Everyday in class, Mr. Brooks would give us a daily writings assignment. Some days it would be a question we had to answer or a picture we had to describe in a certain way. Other days, it was a quote that we had to discuss. This quote was one of our daily assignments. When I first read it, I felt as if my teacher had chosen the quote specifically for me. I wrote a poem in response to the quote describing a girl who was paralyzed with fear and how she slowly began to overcome her fear. I wrote “Fear is a prison” on sticky-notes and began to place them in various places- my locker, my bathroom mirror, on every binder I owned.

Slowly I began to change the way I looked at my fear of judgement. Although I made small changes during that school year, I did not officially get over my fear until the summer after my eleventh grade year. That summer I went to the Rotary Youth Leadership Award Camp, where I knew only one person out of the roughly 70 members. Being put into an environment where I was basically alone gave me the chance to stand up for myself and to not let someone’s opinion of me damage my self-confidence.

Now that I am a senior I am the vice-president of a service club and a co-editor for the literary magazine at my high school. I still write the quote on my binders and other places to remind me to not let fear take over. I have gained so much by realizing that I can stand up in front of a classroom, perform a solo in front of a crowd, or anything else I want to do without letting fear hinder me.