College App Essay

College App Essay

A Shift in Life
The road seemed oh so familiar. I had experienced it so many times before. In the past, I had always navigated well and achieved my goal. My ranking and numerous trophies confirmed my belief. What could be different? This road was familiar. However, unbeknown to me something lied in the road ahead, something that would challenge me to make a correction and shift or stay the course and collide. My “shift” experience occurred during varsity tennis tryouts in freshman year. That experience inspired me to make some changes in my approach to life.

While playing tennis in southern California, I have always been ranked in the top 20 in Southern California for my age group. Therefore, when I entered Loyola in the 9th grade I assumed I would be the best there and make the varsity team. However, I was in for a rude awakening. I went into tryouts with the thought I would just have to hit a few tennis balls and the coach would know that I was the best. I won my first few matches at tryouts and made the varsity team with ease. Ninth grader making the varsity team, with my accomplishments, what else should I expect. Then came the hard part. Practice started and I had to play the best on the team for my spot. I did not do as well as I thought; I lost, bad too. The next match I played it was about the same as my first. I got beat bad and quick. Because of these two losses I played doubles the entire season, never feeling I was able to showcase my talents as a consequence of my two early losses in practice. The coach always told me that I had a lot of talent but needed to work on certain parts of my game to improve for next year, but I never really listened to him. Being ranked so low on the team, I didn’t think I was going to play the next year unless I felt I could be the best on the team.
My status on playing on the tennis team the next year was up in the air even though I was on varsity which some people would be satisfied with. I took a...

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