Igniting My Creativity by Jasmine

Igniting My Creativity by Jasmine - June 2017 Scholarship Essay

Being a 6-year-old, you don’t really have a clear or practical idea of what you want to be when you grow up. Most people would say they remembered wanting to be a princess or astronaut or firefighter. Society has changed and I was fortunate to grow up in a stable household. But frankly, if you asked me “What do you want to be when you grow up?” when I was six, I would have said I didn’t know. I was never the type to dream big like that, especially not as a kid. There were just other things that occupied my time like playing with Barbie dolls or toy trains. But even if I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I was six, I know now and I realize that the idea was always in me from the very beginning.
I was the only child in my family and when I turned six, my parents decided to enroll me in a piano class to which today, I am ever grateful for. I would have never been able to appreciate what I had as a kid until now and learning piano was only the first step to fertilizing my artistic side. My dad, his sister and my cousins all play piano and I figure it was only the inevitable trend I would take part in. Little did I know that it would help me so much in developing my passion for music and art in all forms. Despite not knowing what I wanted to grow up to be when I was six, I think every step of the way, something in me clicked and locked in to enhance what I would come to know now.
Through my education, I was never one to push myself to achieve high academic success. I merely did average. But what I was above average at was music and art. I remember when I was younger my family watched me design an intricate dress on a character in five minutes at the dinner table and they were so impressed. I finally felt like I was good at something. In addition to drawing, I was about twelve when my mother showed me a video of a six-year-old playing professional violin. Seeing that video made me want to learn and that is exactly what I did. Now, I play both piano and violin and it was because of my experiences as a kid that I was able to discover what I really wanted to be -- an illustrator.
Not exactly what you would think from a career involving music and art but when I was younger, about the age of six, I also liked playing video games. Aside from my obsession of Barbies, I liked playing Kirby, Mario and, surprisingly, Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts was the first RPG I was ever introduced to thanks to my dad, an avid gamer. I was always fascinated with the beauty of the characters and the music, not just in Kingdom Hearts but in every game. As a kid, it didn’t make much of a difference to me despite me noticing it but as I grew older and learned of the importance of music in my daily life, I fell in love with everything about the arts of a game. Since music was always in the family, it was natural for me to develop an appreciation for it wherever I went. I found that music was one of the only things that could move me to tears even as a kid and it carried on to now, where I can make my own music and maybe touch others with it.
With my creative instincts, I always imagined stories on my own. Being six and an only child, that was all I could really do in my spare time if I got bored of everything else. I made stories revolving around epic characters with magical powers. I suppose you could say it was typical for a six-year-old to have a vast imagination but the thing is, I never grew out of it. Instead of imagining what I could be as an adult, I imagined a whole separate reality where mythical beings existed and the best part about it was that I found out I could actually use my imagination to form a solid path to a career.
In terms of how the idea of my future evolved, it was through my own experience as a student that I learned I wanted to create for a living. My friends being so academically competitive taught me that I could go my own path. I could deviate from what everyone in my community was brought up to be -- a smart individual with a drive for a challenge and lust for knowledge. That may seem appealing to most people out there but what about taking a look at the ones who don’t care as much about being the smartest in the room? I wanted to be that person. I wanted to focus more on what I’m actually good at and throughout my life, art has always been the dominating factor, propelling me to reach for something I felt I could grasp. 6-year-old me would have wanted to be an artist.