From Struggle To Strength by ZACHARY

From Struggle To Strength by ZACHARY - September 2022 Scholarship Essay

If I could go back and advise my past self of one thing, it would be to turn my weaknesses into strengths. I struggled to look forward on my life and envision a future of worth and success. These failings led me to underestimate my potential for growth. Today, however, I can utilize my differences in thought to help me overcome what previous obstacles I had.

My potential for literary analysis seemed at first to be sparse in comparison to my mathematical reasoning, and it was that way because I had convinced myself that I was incapable of learning language just as well as math. I have since used my detail-oriented nature, proven to be a part of my high functioning autism, to aid in noticing nested literary elements which may often go unnoticed to those analyzing the bigger picture.

Consequently, I have been looking for other potentially mutable weaknesses to modify and aid my mental processes. One such example is my ADHD, which causes any slight change in environment to distract me to no end. My primary method of managing my disorder used to be attempting to suppress it; however, recently I have started using its constant shifts in attention combined with hyperfocus as a stylization technique.

It is for the above reasons that I would counsel myself to harness my uniqueness and let it aid my academic quality. As well as this, one piece of advice I would like from my future self is how to help others learn subjects I have experience in while keeping a sense of relatability about me.