A Fairy Tale Lesson by Isabella

A Fairy Tale Lesson by Isabella - September 2022 Scholarship Essay

Imagine sitting on the highest tower possible, with no room to see the ground and guarded walls higher than the sky, all that is at your fingertips is a ladder and more bricks to continue to build the walls around you. This is my vision of perfection. A guarded tower of all the accomplishments you’ve done and ones that you’ll continue to get, as long as you build high enough to reach them. However, you eventually block yourself out from the rest of the world, surrounded by the superiority you seemingly have due to your high accolades or awards. I’ve built this tower to guard myself against any possibility of failure: no cracks, leaks, or mold shall ever penetrate the walls of my tower, or else I cease to have a safe space I feel that I have value in. This mentality plagued me ever since elementary school, I made myself a glorified Rapunzel, trapped and waiting for something, something that could surpass the barricade I’ve constructed. My advice for that princess who ideally waits in her fortress of fulfillment is to get out and destroy the pillars that have become prison bars in her life.

Princess analogy aside, I’d tell my past self and partly my present self that perfection isn’t always achievable and that you shouldn’t build your self-worth around that ideal. No one can be the absolute best at everything, there is no magic mirror to validate you on who’s the smartest, fastest, or fairest of them all; that’s your job to find. You must find a healthy level of achievement you can reach without neglecting others or yourself. No number of sleepless nights or mental breakdowns over grades, projects, or looks will ever get you to the happily ever after you search for.

I think I finally learned this sentiment fully after my junior year of high school. I know it sounds cliché, but only after the “hardest year” of high school did I realize that “you don’t have to be perfect!” but it was a harsh awakening that no sing-song montage could help with. Countless amounts of paper, files, and water bottles surrounded my desk 24/7, I was trapped in finishing my assignments as soon as possible and with the best quality possible. I sacrificed so many activities to get that “golden” A on my report cards, effectively giving my social life and self-care a poison apple to chew on. This left me terribly burnt out by the end of junior year, reducing my self-motivation to do anything to 0, I was stuck in a hole of self-deprecation to “do more” after doing so much already.

Therefore, I would tell myself to not strive for perfection, to strive for whatever I can achieve reasonably. I feel if I were pestered with those words more, if it were drilled into me like some song, I would have resonated with it more. Now that I’ve started to learn and work on correcting this bad habit of infinite wisdom, I can start considering myself more; I can start forming the realistic happily ever after I’ve dreamed of for so long.