College Admissions Essay: A Personal Experience Of Being Gay

Middle school was a journey that allowed us to figure out who we are and allow us to mature a little. Growing up doesn’t mean that we cannot act like kids.Someone once said, “Age doesn't define maturity. Some people will never grow up.”

My life started with my long and hard birth on July 14, 1993. I came into the world with a large scream and was immediately placed into some sort of category. The doctors and nurses took a quick look at me, and pronounced me as a girl. This social label of being a girl was now my gender, which is something I had no say in. Every since that very moment in time where my parents were told I was a girl, I have been treated according to my gender. This meant that my parents automatically dressed me in pink, bought me dollhouses and kitchen sets and threw me Barbie themed birthday parties. Since I was surrounded my whole entire life by these things, it was almost like second nature to think and act the way that I did and still do. My

Being gay in America is difficult. Being gay in America is even more difficult when you’re not quite gay. Being a closeted not-quite gay woman in America, surrounded by Indian immigrants is pretty difficult, too. It’s a bit like staring in a James Bond film, if all of the characters suddenly developed Bollywood accents, and marginally less homicide. Also, I may be exaggerating, because I don’t attract nearly as many Bond Girls, no matter how much I’d like to. Even understanding what “not-quite gay” means for me was and is a struggle. I suppose a common saying is true: if you can’t find the gay cousin in your family, then you are the gay cousin. And it’s true; in my jumbled mess of aunts, uncles, and third-step cousins once removed, there hasn’t been a single person to come out. Or, if there has, we certainly never talk about them.

Around my middle school years, I knew something about myself was unique, but I could not quite put my finger on it. No one in my family was gay, the word gay was rarely spoken and I did not even know queerness existed. My family lived a very heteronormative lifestyle and I always assumed I would marry a girl and have children. I remember very clearly a day when I was in sixth grade, I was standing in the hallway after class and someone asked me, “are you gay?” I did not know how to react, I did not even know what the word “gay” meant. I immediately replied “NO” as the term gay was always used synonymously with stupid. After school that day, I asked my grandma what it meant to be gay and she described what it mean to be gay. In that moment,

These had cause me to be cold toward men. I also grow up in a straight community where being different is a taboo and it is often not appreciated by the society. I remember a short dark skin man with a low income who used to live in the same neighborhood as my grandmother, he is gay, many people laughed at him but the way he dress, talks and walks. As a future teacher have to ask me what I will do if a boy come to class wearing a dress, I know many kids are going to laugh and call him names, others are going to bullying him. As the adult I'm going to need to do something to stop it and to help every kid in the class that everyone not feel constable dressing or acting like the society wants. Growing up I don't believe that my parents would had let me be friends with gays and lesbian, they might though it would had influence me in my sexual orientation. Today I have friend that are gay. That have been a challenge to me because of what a was tough. It does not shock me any more like it did when I first came to the U.S. and found out that some of my friend did not felt comfortable being male or

Change has been an inconvenience for me the past few years, and even harder this school year. To start, although I talk about this far too much, change first started when I came out. Telling my friends and family was something that was so personal, and extremely out of the ordinary that I couldn’t even think about what it would be like to openly like boys. Now thinking about this, I question: Did I even know myself? Did I even pay attention to people? Because I don’t think I could have gotten any gayer when I was a child. So I assume that means, I wasn’t hiding from people, I was hiding from myself really, because everyone knew I was gay and was just waiting for me to say something.

One day I realized that I would pay attention to and have crushes on the female characters in tv shows more than the males. I already knew what being gay was and how my family talked about people who didn't sexually identify as heterosexual, so I tried to hide it and I tried to get rid of my tendency to prefer females. I would be hurt and smile through whenever my parents would joke about gay people and call them names without knowing they were hurting someone they cared about.

At the age of seventeen, I was in my senior year of high school and I came out as transgender to all of my friends. I had asked all of my friends to call me Shane and to refer to me as a boy, most of them tried as hard as they could to get it right. They felt bad if they didn't get it right but I understood. I told my parents that I wanted to legally change my name and change my gender but my dad said no, my mom had started to come

Puberty. Ugh. Those were some bad days were they not? Outside of just feeling uncomfortable and raging with all these new emotions, everywhere you looked, everyone was going through the same thing, not to mention how unpleasant you and your classmates appeared. Offended? Sorry, but come on, middle school was some unsightly years. No one looked good. It's a time when we become physically aware of our bodies and seek to improve them anyway we can, hoping those we have our eye on notice them. It's also a time when we start questioning the world and how we all fit in it. It's

I knew it would be a challenging for my family to accept me being gay. Being the only gay male in the family was not as easy as it sounded in my head. I decided to wait for the “right time”. As years passed, it took a toll out of

“It takes no compromise to give people their rights… it takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression.” This is an extract taken from the biography of Harvey Milk, the first gay person elected into public office in California.

Growing up can be difficult. Especially the period of life puberty takes place in. As children around the

So as my first attempted to be “straight” failed, I decided to try it again in high school. In high school, I started to hang out with a group of guys who I really like. We talked about stuff that guys usually enjoyed like sports, video games,... and we all had a good time with each other. But things start to change as when I was in 10th grade, the boys in our groups starts dating girls. Those guys probably really happy about their relationships because I recalled them often staring at their phone text-ting all the time. At one time, I told them I did not find girls attractive and they quickly jumped to conclusion that I was gay. I quickly denied that saying I was asexual but it seemed like they did not believe me in the

It has long been debated where our sexual orientation comes from, particularly whether its biological or social forces driving these behaviors. In regards to homosexuality and bisexuals, some have argued that it may be a choice that these individuals are making.(Levay 2012: 41)Some have even said it is a mental disorder that one can recover from, but there is plenty of data that says otherwise.(Levay 2012: 41)(Levay 2012: 65) I believe diverse sexual orientations develop in humans due to sex hormones during fetal life, gene influences, and other effects such as birth order influences. I’ve come to this conclusion based on the narrative provided via Dr. Simon LeVay’s book Gay Straight, and the Reason Why, and the research that has been compiled showing strong influences from a multitude or reasons. I will also be looking at a research paper by Francesca Iemmola and Andrea Camperio Ciani, who looked into genetic factors influencing sexual orientation in men. It is clear there are gender differences between men and women, and this is probably one of the strongest indicators that hormones can affect the outcome of variations in gender traits.

Many use their middle and high school years as a path of self-discovery, whether they know it or not. Like most people, I spent most of my life feeling I was like everyone else that was around me: cisgender and heterosexual. In middle school, I began to learn that there was even such a thing as having a different sexuality, though at that age it was all being ridiculed in front of me, and I shrugged the whole ordeal off as being something that had never and would