Dance in the Rain by Zoya

Dance in the Rain by Zoya - November 2018 Scholarship Essay

I sighed. I was having a pretty rough day and wanted nothing more than to go home and jump into my bed. However, I left school during rush hour, and so I had to pay the price.

As I was waiting for the traffic light to turn green, I looked at all the stickers on the car in front me. I couldn’t find anything interesting there, and just as my attention span was about to wander off, my gaze settled upon a small grey sticker at the bottom of the car. The sticker was drained of color and was falling off, but the quote written on it managed to hit home.

“Instead of hiding in the storm, learn to dance in the rain”

My attention span then weaned off, and I looked at the cars next to me. When I looked back at the front, I finally let those words sink in. My two brain cells began to chatter excitedly amongst themselves and I figured out that no matter how much I sulk and complain, the traffic won’t move itself. Instead, I should adapt and make the most of it. Therefore, I put on my favorite song at the time and raised the volume. I mentally patted myself on the back for my ingenuity.

The traffic light turned green. As I started driving, I began to daydream (hopefully no cops are reading this). I first started thinking about my academic life which then lead to my career goals and ultimately my future. I also started to think about the quote I just read on a deeper level.

As a child, I always imagined myself a CEO, a marketing specialist, an advertisement expertise, or anything really along those lines. I took my first step in this career path in grade 10. I joined this program called Junior Achievement Program which is essentially a program for high school students to come together and create their own little business, under supervision. I remember it like yesterday. I was finally doing something that mattered. However, as the days passed, the more I felt myself not wanting to go anymore. It wasn’t that the program was bad, or that I was being bullied, but it was because I felt left out. I felt like I didn’t belong there, that no one needed me, and that I was useless to the team. I was shy, and it costed me my belief in myself.

Compared to everyone else, I was quiet, and no one really wanted to talk to me, so they just didn’t. After that, my dream started disappearing. It felt like I was trying to tighten my grip against water. I realized that I didn’t have what it takes to be successful in the business world. I just wasn’t enough.

So, when college came around the corner, I had no idea what to do. I spent my first year as an undecided major. Something that took me very long to understand is that no one is born skilled, or talented, or special. You are born with the same skills as anyone else. What makes you different and unique is what you’ve done with your life. Your experiences, your interests, your hobbies: These are the things that make you. Anything you want to accomplish in life, whatever you want to become, is already within you. Absolutely anything. You are an endless flood of talents that just need to be awakened and brought to life. If you ever feel like you aren’t enough, it’s not because you lack a certain quality, it’s because you haven’t lit up that one candle in a field of a thousand already lit candles.

Similarly, the reason why I believed I wasn’t good enough for business was because I didn’t think that I had it in me. After my freshmen year, I realized how much more social and outgoing I had become compared to the last 18 years of my life. This whole time, I was on my journey to light up that candle. The more I thought about it, the clearer it became. On August 12, 2018, I finally made my decision to go into business. And this time, I was ready. I was enough.

Thinking back to the quote today reminds me of all that I have accomplished so far, and all that I can accomplish in the future. I’ve spent my whole life hiding in the storm, because I was scared that if I went outside, I wouldn’t be able to survive. But all along, hiding in the storm didn’t ever get me anywhere. All I had to do was set out my sails and fight for what I believed in.

Life isn’t ever going to be easy. In fact, it’s only going to get harder as we age. We can hide and pretend that we don’t have problems, or we can learn how to solve these issues. Therefore, I would choose that quote to be my senior quote because it made me choose me over what I thought I wasn’t. It made me realize who I really was, and the power I had within me. And trust me, just like the power that lies within your hands, it is undefeatable. All you need to do is harness it.