Interested by Leslie

Interested by Leslie - November 2018 Scholarship Essay

As was becoming common, I walked into Dad's office in tears. "What's wrong Leslie?" he asked. "I hate moving. Every time I make friends, we leave. Now I'm in a school where no one bothers to get to know me. They notice that I'm tall, or that I'm smart, and that's enough information to satisfy them. It's not like I'm a bad person, so why does everyone ignore me? I would be a fun friend."
The next day, I was surprised to see an email from Dad in my inbox. It read, "I saw this quote and it made me think of your predicament. 'To have a friend, be a friend.' Try that and tell me how it goes. I love you!" While I appreciated that Dad was looking out for me, I thought that the solution could not possibly be that simple. What did "being a friend" entail? I already smiled at people, cracked the occasional joke, and didn't say mean things. Plus, I tried to hang out with people. Wasn't that being a friend?
Over the next couple of days, I tried to be better at executing my vague definition of "friend." My results were not encouraging. How could I expect them to be? I didn't understand how to be a true friend yet. It follows that after another flood of tears on my part, Dad had a need to amend his previous advice. Along with some other stuff, he said, "It is better to be interested than to be interesting." It finally dawned on me that I'd been focusing on all of my attributes that made me deserving of attention rather than the other way around. Every person in my class had amazing things about them too! And yet, how many things could I name off about any of them? Not a lot.
This time around, my "be a friend" efforts were much more fruitful. Before, the poor student next to me had often been bombarded with detailed (and often exaggerated) accounts of my weekend adventures. After learning Dad's lesson, I would instead ask about how she had spent her time. In the past, if someone interrupted my story with their own, I would plunge back into my mine with "Anyway..." My newfound desire to be interested helped me to get out of this embarrassing habit and listen. My new approach to being a friend didn't make me the most popular girl in the 6th grade, but it did help me build a relationship with my soon-to-be best friend.
Let's fast forward to the present. I can't say that interruptions aren't still a pet peeve of mine, but I tend to handle them better. And when I walk into a room of strangers, they still notice and comment on my height before I can get a word in, but it doesn't bother me anymore. I know that I'm more complex than what others pick up from a quick glance. More importantly, I have learned to recognize the same principle in those around me. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has something that makes them worth getting to know. As I live my senior quote, "It's better to be interested than interesting," I find myself surrounded with too many friends to count. When I show sincere interest in others, they usually become interested in me. It's almost like Dad knows what he's talking about.