AP Calculus Almost Ruined Me... Almost by Michelle

AP Calculus Almost Ruined Me... Almost by Michelle - May 2015 Scholarship Essay

I'm on a rock, a slab of granite, lost in fog, staring at the Pacific:

"What happened?" My teacher asked. I kept my head low. I scored at the bottom of my class…again. I was barely staying afloat. I felt worthless. My peers were shining, excelling. I was rusting away into oblivion. I wasn’t good enough… until my friend, the valedictorian, the top student at the school told me otherwise.

“Don’t give up on yourself. Grades don’t define who you are.”

I scoffed. College applications were right around the corner. It was hard to feel as if your grades weren’t a measure of your capabilities.

“Listen,” she looked at me gravely. “We all have strengths. We all have weaknesses. Find your passion. Follow your dreams. You’ll realize how amazing you really are and when you do, it’ll all fall into place. I know math was never your thing.”

“It definitely never was,” I admitted bitterly.

She smiled. “And that’s ok.”

My world illuminated from that point on.

***

I came back to the night. I felt her smile when she uttered those three simple words that opened the gates to my radiant future. “And that’s okay,” I whispered to the cosmos. There was a presence. A ghost, a phantom, lurked lithely in the shadows of the trees that held the upon their branches the celestial sky, the ether of heaven where no man shall ever reign. On her tiptoes, she whispered into my ear,

"For 4 years, you've followed a path that led you in the wrong direction. No matter how hard you try, or how hard you make yourself believe, you will never be the Einstein like that girl in your class. You're average at best. You will never be an engineer like your friend. Science is another language to you. Teachers help you because, unlike them, you need all the help you can get. You won't set the curve because those kinds of people will surpass you no matter how hard you try. And it's because they are they...and you are you."

Her breath was ice; she whispered the cold truth.

"I-will-beat-them!" I cried resentfully, tearing the Calculus exam with my hands. "I-will-show-them-that-I-am-just-as-good-as-they-are!"

I will keep going. I'm going to fall. Heck! I fell so many times already! More times than I could count the fingers on my raw hands or the toes on my swollen foot or the stars in the black sky.

That's what life's about…pretending you can't fall, falling, standing up, and finding the willpower and perseverance to go through hell again.

My bike fell over, dead.

"There's nowhere to run anymore...nowhere to hide.so look up," she demanded.

I'm under a blanket of light. A street lamp nestles a fading hilltop. A lighthouse's beam took flight past a child's bedroom window. The shadows take fleet and the light begins its exodus to the other half of the world. We sacrifice ourselves to witness times like this...times of self-discovery.

"Wake up."

I turned around...the hair, the voice...those eyes...this is who I am.

"Wake up," she repeated, "because these aren't the nights you wallow in. These are the nights that make you realize that you are the fire they can't put out. You're the unstoppable spirit, a force like the sea. And for years, you've forgotten who you were."

"The tide is turning; the times are changing; and times of revolutions are when people stretch themselves far and beyond to manifest, to prove to themselves and to each other that they are to be the next of the Greats...that they are to be legends."

"And I'll write those legends," I said, amazed of who I am, of whom I've hidden. I mounted the rail to swallow the bitter air that sailed through my fingers, to scream, "I'll write legends that screw the lives of divine saints; I'll be the melody that abuses the wicked dreams of miserable men, the rising wind that made the silent fool rich and the dying dream live!"

For four years I tried to be something that I was not. I ran and hid and I fought for the tyrant's dream.

I'm no mathematician or physicist and I should stop trying to be. When I calculate, the wind moans. When I write, a leaf erupts in the valley of ash. I had to stop comparing myself to my classmates because I can only be the best I can be.

I pounded the sky with my fist.

I am the master of my fate! I am the captain of my soul! I'll trample my weaknesses. My power lies in my words, words that split the seas and set mountains ablaze.

The wind lashed at me, but the flame in my heart, in my perpetually spirited soul chased away the cold so I may live to tell the tale of how the fool in rags lived on to wield the golden scepter and wear the diamond crown.

We all have strengths. We all have weaknesses. The hardest thing is admit to our defeat and realize our failures. However, when those dark clouds clear and when that star is spotted, the guise falls and we stand in light. We realize who we are and we tremble to see the power we truly possess.

I am a writer-a dreamer and vanquisher of impossibilities.