I Can't Think of a Title... I Think I'm Still Concussed by Kyle

I Can't Think of a Title... I Think I'm Still Concussed by Kyle - June 2016 Scholarship Essay

Going into my freshman year of high school, I thought that I had everything under control; I was taking all honors classes, playing football, basketball, and baseball, and had a ton of friends. The one thing that I didn't account for was having to work through all of that while having a serious concussion. After the first couple of games of football, the coaches knew I was athletic enough to play more than one position. I ended up being a wide receiver, corner back, punter, and punt returner. I was constantly on the field, playing almost every down of the game. It was the fourth game of the season and we were going up against a team much bigger and better than us. I remember being on defense that game and they ran almost every play to my side of the field. This meant that I was getting pounded into the ground constantly. I started to feel a little lightheaded, but my whereabouts were still there. It was the first quarter and the coach thought we needed a little life in our team. He chose to run a fake punt, and he gave the signal for it, but I was the only one who picked up the sign from the sidelines. I looked up and all I saw was a wall of what looked to be full-grown men rushing towards me. I got thrown and slammed into the ground, and that is the last thing I remember from that game in which I continued to play. Coaches love the phrase “stats never lie.” Well, the stats say that I had two interceptions after that failed fake punt run, and I couldn’t remember that to save my life. My freshman coach, with whom I am still close with, always laughs about how lost I looked during that game. But little did he know, it was no laughing matter.
The weeks that followed were difficult. The concussion caused me to get a headache after looking at a screen for too long. I also found myself lacking focus in the classroom, which was out of character for me considering that I had all honors classes. These classes required hours of studying and homework every single night, hours that I could not physically or mentally put in. My mom and I made many doctor visits to get MRIs and CAT scans. The only thing that was going to help me was not looking at a screen and refraining from athletic activities. Of course it had to be the two things that I do the most of in my life. My grades started to significantly drop, especially my English grade. Because of my “no screens” prescription, I wasn’t able to follow along with anything that we were doing as a class. I looked at my grade one day and I had a 32 F in English class. This obviously was not my fault, but my English teacher thought that I could somehow find a way around my concussion and hand in all of my late work. I couldn’t do this and had to drop my honors class. Other classes suffered for similar reasons. I ended up dropping three honors courses that year. This definitely hurt me for my college aspirations. But I was determined to overcome that, so I moved myself back up to three honors courses instead of one. By senior year I was taking three honors classes and two AP classes, and I was succeeding in them with a 3.6 GPA. If it wasn’t for my drive and determination to succeed in high school, I would have probably ended up at a junior college somewhere. Instead, I will be attending Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the fall of 2016.
Through this difficult experience, I learned that if you want to be successful, you have to fight adversity in every way that you can. If you want it to happen, you have to make it happen. I am proud of myself for overcoming the obstacles that were put before me. But in order to continue being successful, I need to be ready for whatever life can throw at me.