GROW

No matter how I look at it, this year has undeniably been the most important year of my life. I think that this can be said for each new year I’ve lived through. The next always takes precedence over the one before. And this will remain a fact due to the basis of all life—growth. This inevitable part of life-whether welcomed or forced-comes as a guide to the next phases of life. It does not prepare you for the future so much as it just opens your eyes to the past.

At the beginning of my junior year, I could have never imagined in my wildest dreams that it would end the way it did. So much has happened this year that I can hardly remember who I was when it started. She shortest nine and a half months I can remember passing by have had the most extreme impact that nine and a half months can have on a person. Back in August, my mind was made up, my determination was set, and my expectations were high. It only took about two or three weeks AP English alone to bring all those goals which I had made crashing to the ground. (This isn’t even including all my other classes and out of school activities). But before this, I had come up with a theme for my year: GROW. This was going be the year that changed it all. I even drew a picture that had the word “grow” proudly boasted across the center. I put it on the cover of my folder to remind me of what this year had in store, but about a month into school it went from being an inspirational reminder to a mocking eyesore. It was soon after removed and forgotten. And so, I turned to face my most difficult year of school yet with a heavy, hopeless heart.

My academics took a turn for the worst. This was clearly not my most outstanding year as far as they were concerned. In fact, it is safe to say that it was my worst. But while all this was happening, there were many other parts of my life-unbeknownst to me-taking a turn for the better. My innate need to keep myself quiet and invisible from all except my friends was slowly melting away. I have many people-a few in particular-and circumstances-mostly musical-to thank for that. The majority didn’t and will never know that they were helping me. At the time, even I didn’t know anything was taking place. My long dormant confidence was starting to take root and bud. Though this change was slow and probably unnoticed by those around me, as I started to notice a difference, it was considerably one of the most fantastic transformations in my life to this point. Without those positive impacts, I believe that this past year would have been the most damaging year I could have lived through. I wasn’t at the point of flunking out of high school, but when you befriend and come into a lot of contact with really smart and driven people day in and day out, and are watching your once high standards crash around you without being able to make yourself care enough to do anything about it, it does stuff to you. This balance of success and failure was enough to drive me insane, but turned out to be the sweetest mixture of life I could have asked for.

Being able to look back at this year as the person I am today is having and will have an invaluable impact on my future. My successes have made me a more confident person, while my failures have caused me to stop, clear my head, and get ready to do this all over again next year, but better. I knew junior year was going to be hard, but you can never really understand something until you live through it yourself. Upon sorting through memories from the beginning of the year, I found myself recalling the memory of a certain piece of paper with the word GROW in all caps proudly boasted across the center. I laughed out loud when I thought of this. I thought long and hard about the past year of my life and realized that without even knowing or trying, I had grown more than I could have imagined or hoped for. I am still looking for my first true self defining moment, but all the small steps I’ve taken this year have really been one big step towards that moment. As much as the thought of growth and change scare me sometimes, the thought of not growing scares me more. People come in and out of your life all the time and change you in ways that neither you nor they may ever know. There have been numerous people like that in my life-though I do plan to hang on to a select few forever. I have decided that I will never stop learning, changing, or growing. Ok, so all of those things are inevitable and will happen whether I want them to or not. But that’s the exciting part; I do want them to happen.