Finding Myself Again by Miranda

Finding Myself Again by Miranda - June 2021 Scholarship Essay

Throughout high school, I saw myself in a different way than other people had seen me. While others may have seen me as just another blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl who was always smiling, others got to see me in my full potential as a musician, a club president, a three sport athlete, or the Vice President of the student council. None of that mattered to me though in high school. I did what I loved, and it was not doing the activities that gave me fulfillment but the fact that I knew that one day I would be able to achieve so much more than I could even imagine.

Going through a global pandemic at the end of my senior year, I lost everything that I thought had mattered to me. I lost the last of the valuable time that I would spend with my friends. I lost my athletic senior nights, my last concert, the last time I would walk through my hallways, and so much more. I walked out of my school one last time and did not even realize that it would be the last time I would step into a classroom for a whole year.

I spent months during the pandemic doing nothing with myself. I had to stay home for my first college semester because the financial burden from covid had struck my family like it did to so many others. I would take my classes from my bed, go to work in the afternoon, go to bed, and start over another day. This lifestyle had become so miserable to me. I knew for as long as I could dream about being successful, that I did not want to be someone who felt stuck. However that was exactly where I was, stuck. Stuck in a life that I did not want. Stuck in my body which no longer felt like mine. And stuck in routine that made it emotionally hard for me to get out of bed in the morning. I had gone from being a person who had so much potential, so much to offer, to another student who would mope in their losses from the pandemic.

It was not until I got a text from a previous teacher and club adviser that I decided that I needed to change my ways. This teacher had been someone who meant so much to me from the first year that I had her as a freshman in high school. One night at my work I saw her after a long day that felt like it would never end. In our conversation that evening she told me that I had looked different. she told me with utmost honestly that it looked like my bright personality had been fading. At the end of our conversation, she struck me with words that had hit home and sunk into my heart. She said to me "Remember where you came from, and that if you don't like where you are in your life, change it so that one day I can see the person who I always knew you would be." As I sat with these words I realized I was really not where I wanted to be in my life. The pandemic happened almost a year ago and I was still thinking about what could have been.

So now today, June of 2021, it is a year and two months since I have experienced a global pandemic. I have found a new love in healthy eating, working out, and painting. I just finished my first year of college and received an internship from a law firm. Now I am on the path to earning a bachelor of science in both Criminology and Psychology. A few months ago, I was ready to give up my dreams of being in the FBI. I almost let a small setback set back my entire life. If it were not for seeing my freshman year computer teacher, I may have let the hard times get the best of me. And although this teacher is not my physical teacher anymore, she is still the most influential teacher to me. Because a teacher does not have to be someone who has spent months with you in a classroom, but someone who has taught you something that you will remember the rest of your life.