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Addict
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: New York City: the obvious capital of the world
Gender: Male
Posts: 114
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Highschool Drivel
I recently found this personal essay which I wrote as a highschool Junior. I belive the assignment was on moments that make us question ourselves...or some such thing. It's pretty angsty, but I got an A on it at the time, I figured I'd share it with you all. Let me know what you think of it. (I took out the name of the town from the school name)
Light slashed across my eyes such that I could barley make out the names of the five kids sitting in a row across from me, which they had scribbled in pencil on white sheets hanging from their desks. It was that annoying afternoon sun, low on the horizon which cut through the window and reflected off the desk into my face. The rest of the team was to my right, it was only our second match of the day, but I was more than ready to go home. The so called “Tournament of Champions,” the academic challenge competition for all the teams who qualified for nationals in our region, took place on a hot Tuesday afternoon.
It had been prize day at school. I hadn’t gone. The concept turned my stomach, sitting listlessly in a sea of students clad in formalwear, yielding apathetic applause to those overachievers chosen to be acknowledged by the prestigious establishment that is __ Country Day School. Of the students whose intelligence I respect most, not one was mentioned; the system is flawed, it makes the awards meaningless.
We were winning. Three rounds down, the forth round began. Math question, pencils were flailing. I didn’t try. I was the only one in the row who hadn’t taken BC calc, why bother, I detest math. Watching the frantic calculations was somewhat amusing. While they worked my mind wandered, settling on all the things I had to do that night, make up for the classes I had missed during AP exams. I weighed what I would do and what I would ignore, my usual triage. I was even less interested in work than usual; APs had drained me. I used to be confident in my intelligence, walking out of my sixth exam I had lost such delusions.
The proctor was already reading the next question when I realized it was familiar. It was a fill in the blank question, an English nursery rhyme. “Ride a crock horse to ___ to see a fine lady upon a white horse…” I cut him off with the answer before he finished, “Banbury Course.” He said something about waiting to be acknowledged and then gave me the points. I wasn’t listening, I was thinking about the rhyme, “with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes she shall have music wherever she goes,” it continued in my head. I had no idea where it was from; I couldn’t put my finger on it. And then I remembered my mom reciting it when I was little. It was funny how things had changed since then: I used to be pretty happy, all the time, not so much anymore. I’d gotten over that. I’d accepted the way things were in my life and the way things would be, I had come to a point of apathy, disconnected from any aspirations of that time. I was fine with the fact that I would never win a prize, or get straight A’s, and that I would never get into an Ivy League school. For some reason all that stuck in my head at that moment was the picture of my mom, smiling, reciting this stupid nursery rhyme to her kid. She doesn’t smile like that anymore, only in a fake plastic way when other people are around.
I was generally considered by my parents to be a disappointment. But, for the first time in a long time, I actually cared. I had wasted so much potential, and although I was fine with it, I knew it hurt her; it was a fact that I tended to ignore. I was so used to separating myself from my mom and dad, pinning my shortcomings as a person on their shortcomings as a parents; they were far from perfect, but they cared about me, at least they used to. They wanted me to be something that I wasn’t. For the first time I felt as though I had failed them, and failed myself. I was stupid and shallow and pathetic for everything I had done, and especially for everything I hadn’t. When we had walked into the room everyone was talking about colleges, names like Princeton, Yale, and Tufts were being thrown around; I remembered making a joke about being the only member of the academic challenge team to have a future at the Community College. It didn’t seem funny anymore. I was a waste, a failure, a burden, a disappointment.
I was snapped out of my delirium by the next question. I caught only a few words: “boson,” “nucleus,” “strong force,” “quark.” I buzzed in quickly, “gluon.” After an angry look from the proctor (I hadn’t been acknowledged by name) he gave it to me. “20 points, __ Country Day - A.” Two in a row, maybe I wasn’t so worthless after all.
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At least I think... so... 
