A Life in Transition: My Academic Career
School has never been a satisfying experience for me. I’ve always marched along in unison with all my classmates, just another brick in the wall. Learning how to write in cursive, reciting the Spanish alphabet, and engraving all the grammar rules I could possibly imagine into my brain – all been taken care of. I’ve always had above average grades, but never have I reached, what I believe to be, my full potential. I remember students from my class excelling. I didn’t show it, but I was secretly jealous of my best friend John Makris and a student from Japan whose name escapes me, who received high regards for their efforts. Graham Greene once said that there is “always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” It was not until my junior year in high school that my door opened. I found that putting forth one’s best effort yields results considerably more satisfactory in the grand scheme of things than sitting on a couch wasting time ever could.
“It’s not that I’m lazy, it’s just that I don’t care.” This quote from one of my favorite movies, Office Space, is the single-most defining phrase of the first twelve years of my academic life. Trying never really was an option for me, just a trophy on the mantle I never cared to look at. Aspirations to follow in my father’s footsteps and become a successful physician never appealed to me, I didn’t have a childhood dream to one day become a firefighter, and I never really found something I excelled in that could lead to a career. There seemed to be overwhelming evidence in favor of being a second-rate, care-free student.
After years of becoming the best lazy student I could be I came to my junior year of high school. This was the year that my habits crippled me in a serious manner. My English teacher that year found it amusing to elaborate on my working habits in front of the class, until one day someone finally asked if she thought I was a smart...