Student profile
The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
I sat at the back of the bus, my leg bouncing up and down from the combination of the anxiety and excitement I was feeling about the first day of high school. I was going from a school with just 20 students in my graduating class to one with 200. I hopped out of the bus and looked down at the map, trying to figure out my class. I slowly read to myself, Period 1 with (Dr. X) in (building 1) 102. Seemed simple enough, I thought, all I had to do was find (building 1).
I followed the crowd of upperclassmen but was eventually faced with a crossroads. I had no idea where to go or what to do. I just stood there, paralyzed, staring at the people rushing past me, but couldn’t get myself to move an inch, so afraid of getting lost. I stood there as the bell rang, silently acknowledging my inevitable lateness. After what felt like hours, a teacher came out of her classroom and led me to the building I needed to go to. I am forever grateful for her kindness but I look back now and wonder how long I would have stood there paralyzed by fear. In that moment, I made a promise to myself to find my path over the next few years and never hold myself back because of my fear of failure again.
My entire life, I wanted to be perfect at everything on my first try, and if I wasn’t I just gave up. I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t challenged this belief. Failure helped me see what doesn’t work, which is equally as important as figuring out what does. Changing the way I saw failure opened me up to so many opportunities and led to my discovery of some of my biggest passions. In high school, I tried and did everything that interested me, refusing to hold myself back.
I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and attended the Student Diversity Leadership Conference (SDLC) where I met students from all over the country about their identities. I don’t want to pursue activism full time, but the experience made me develop a wider, more diverse perspective that takes into account the experiences of groups that didn’t exist in my own community. It taught me how to collaborate with diverse groups of people and integrate new perspectives into my mindset. I tried archery club, tech theater, problem-solving competitions, and dance classes. I missed my first homecoming dance to participate in the “Next Big App” workshop and joined my school’s TEDx team. I took business classes, competed in hackathons, and began creating digital art. I won a number of awards and commendations in business, hackathons, and problem-solving competitions.
Some of the activities that I threw myself into didn’t really stick, others stayed with me and helped me decide how I wanted to spend my future. I never actually picked up a bow and arrow and coordination didn’t come naturally to me, everything I tried brought me one step closer to where I wanted to be, whether I failed or succeeded. Through these activities, I developed a love for computer science, business, and design, and found connections between these interests. I could bring my collaboration and teamwork skills from SDLC to the male-dominated world of Computer Science and use my design skills to create beautiful designs for my business ideas to feed my entrepreneurial drive.
Failure will not stand in my way, as I face my future, in a world combining all of my skills, to propose creative solutions for big problems, developing technology to solve these problems, and leading a large diverse group of people to enable successful ventures. As I look forward to an even larger college campus, I have made a promise to myself to find my path and create the next big thing.