Today is Veteran’s Day, so I had the day off school. Intermission.
My attention span is becoming dangerously shorter. I think there’s something psychologically wrong with me. Once anything leisurely seeps into my work time, then it’s bye-bye work for at least a few hours. Up until a few weeks ago, it wasn’t at all like this. I could just come home, work on my homework, get any extra studying done, and then have enough time to chat with some friends and work on my comic. Now I forget about as much as I put off. It’s horrible.
Anyway, I was intent on focusing today towards writing my college essay for the Universities of California. I disconnected internet access from my room. The prompt was to talk about things outside of school that make me who I really am. I couldn’t finish it – Solitaire, Minesweeper, and later a misplaced PS2 got in my way. It’s that freaking awful.
My parents wanted to see what what I had done, though, so I printed out a copy. They labeled it antagonistic, defensive, and contradictory, and I completely agree. Here’s the incomplete pièce de resistance. Crap on this.
There is a widespread belief every teenager’s life revolves around school. School determines where one will go for college, and, consequently, in which field one will major. The major then determines where one will go for a living. The story supposedly ends there. Does this mean that people are never individuals, in that everyone takes the same course in life? In the real world, every person is unique, and everyone has their own interests and aspirations outside of school. The latter adage clearly applies to me – I cannot rely on my astounding grades, my position as quarterback on my school’s football team, or my admittance into every available honor society to show who I really am – for I have none of those. Instead, what makes me unique could often be dismissed as a pithy free-time activity. It is my passion for web design and development.
I grew up as a gifted child. I could read and write by age 3. I added and subtracted for fun. As a first grader, my standardized test scores were in the 99th percentile of the nation-wide second grade scores. I could master any simple trade to which I was introduced. Development on the computer was one of these trades. At school, I painted pictures, while at home, I drew bitmaps. I wrote stories for my classes, while I wrote code for my websites. As my skills grew at school, so grew my skills at home.
Soon enough, my free-time activities began to influence my whole persona. I showcased my websites to my classmates. My online personality traits seeped into my real-life demeanor. My group of friends became the “geeks,” people with the same interests as I.