College Admissions Essay: What Is My Insecurity?

I have always been very obsessed with body image. When I was young, baseball was my sport. Soon after, I joined the swim team. During these years I’ve never looked the way that pleased me. When the age of fourteen came around, I decided to join the gym with a personal trainer. At this time, being overweight and unhappy. Never did I think the gym would mean so much to me in the future. Just before the age of sixteen, bodybuilding made a drastic impression on me. The art of building a well symmetrical body. Everything about this sport fascinated me because it gave a chance to create a new me.

Each individual is created to live their life uniquely. Each person has their own beliefs and opinions. They shape how one perceives others and how one affects others whether it be personally,locally, or globally.

When I was a young child I was shy, socially awkward, and horribly insecure, so when I realized popularity would never be my strength I decided to put all my efforts into what I was good at: school. As early as kindergarten I was identified as an advanced student and teachers quickly highlighted my efforts as exemplary to the other students. I fed off the high praise. The better I performed academically, the greater the approval I received, the better I felt about myself, so as a naive child I determined my self-worth and academic performance were inherently linked. As long as I was successful in academics, I would be a successful person. For years, I believed that, putting school beyond all else.

Overcoming my timidness may not seem like such an important deed, but when I look back, I recognize how much it held me back. The fear of speaking up crippled me and caused me to be unable to speak my mind. The black hole that consumed my life was my own insecurity. I started my first year of high school perfectly content living without a voice, as long as I was not the center of attention, I was at peace. During my junior year, I decided that it was finally time to face my challenge head on. I did the one thing that scared me most, I ran for treasurer for both the senior class and National Honors Society. At the time I made the decision, I knew that an important part of being an officer was speaking in front of my peers and teachers. I made

In the early years of life, most children do not spend their free time looking in the mirror and wracking their brain for an answer to the question, “What are you?” I suppose that particular experience is quite unique to my childhood. For as long as I can remember my race has been something that comes into question or speculation in some way or another. To this day, I struggle with my identity due to being a mixed race individual.

Rejection is my friend, we met when I was four years old. Some hear failure, I hear opportunity, the opportunity to try again and do it even better than before. My ability to stand up and stare rejection straight in the face has opened my eyes, soon realizing that triumph and loss come hand and hand. From a young age, I have faced rejection in ways that some would not expect a child could endure.

I could have done better. I believe that I can always improve and get better. The Power of an Insecurity is one of my least favorite essays that I’ve ever wrote. It was an essay that I felt nervous while writing, as I was now in a college class. I have my losses in this paper and I have my victories, but my ability to better myself in my writing is always improving.

Growing up, I was always criticized about the extra weight I carried around with me. The negative remarks got into my head and one day I had enough; around the age of 12 I decided that I wanted to be “normal”. This led me to extreme diets and exercises and within a few months I was getting compliments. Little did I know, that the methods that I used to get rid of my fat, were not healthy approaches. I soon began to develop the opposite problem -- being too skinny -- and again, I was not happy with myself. When I got to high school, I saw all these physically fit athletes and made the conclusion that I had to imitate them if I wanted to look like them. First, I tried out for the soccer team. Every day, I would spend countless hours practicing

Fear, is our greatest trouble. It affects us as individuals, as a nation, and as humanity. What pushed us to arm against each other up to the point of constant threat of complete annihilation? Fear. What causes the xenophobes to think that other cultures are threats to their own? Fear. What made the old lady firmly hold her purse when I sat besides her, the last time I took a bus at night? Fear. But what is fear more than a complex web of lies, in which we all have to fall more than once? It is an illusion of insecurities, a refuge for ignorance, an excuse for division.

I’m not smart. I won’t make it anywhere. I’m confused- was all I could think when thinking about my future. People kept telling me what to do or when I had a career in mind, apparently it wasn’t suited for me. This made me feel like I couldn’t do anything because I couldn’t see a future for myself.

I’m tapping away at my iPhone’s screen during the announcements for the latest Interact windbreaker orders, fidgeting in fierce anticipation until the horrendously slow internet decides to load; several of my friends sit beside me in the auditorium in Raider Hall, and are too, maneuvering through their phones for their recently uploaded grades. This zeal is manifested by the fact that throughout my life, the importance of the academics had been imposed upon me, and inevitably, I succumbed to its rigorous demands. And as such, I hold a tendency to compare the product of my work to that of my peers. These peers, to say the least, interpreted the competitiveness as somewhat conceited.

Reflecting on my childhood, I always had a vivid imagination. I loved telling stories to anyone who would listen. As I grew older, I began writing poetry and I became obsessed with movies. Over the years, I realized that I wanted to travel to some of the places I had seen in the various movies but my thoughts of what I wanted to remain indifferent.

First off, happy 16th birthday zbob, whoops I mean za-knob whoops I mean zainab. We met freshman year and who knew how many people we were gonna get blocked by! The possibilities are endless with you. The year continued with us losing chill and any care. We got blocked by 2 people but somehow magically got no restraining orders. After I while you said you wanted a job so I gave you one. My full time unpaid therapist. You helped me through hell and back, put up with the drama I got myself in, and even showed me that it is ok to be myself. You always had lotion so that made me like you even more. We had hilarious memories, prank calling ghostface and MJ. Don’t even get me started on our after-school dates. We have just over a million code names which honestly, I can’t remember anymore.

I will admit I am too hard on myself. I am very industrious, and talk to a limited amount of people. I strive to excel in whatever my objective is to accomplish, but I've been described to put others before my own needs. How I would describe myself is to the point: I am impatient, industrious, loving, compassionate, hard working, excelling, willing to learn, and Godly.

I’m a sixteen year old female who has been raised my whole life around the fact that my mind must be perfect. If I wasn’t meeting up to the standards of my parents, then I needed to change everything about myself to meet them. My anxiety eats at me everyday. It feels like I have a colossal boulder sitting on my chest a lot of the time. The other times, I lose all of my care for anything in that moment. One day, I attempted to explain the situation to my mother and asked her to take me to a doctor. I had been waiting until my parents could afford health insurance for me to go, but all she heard was that there was something was not up to her standards inside of my head, like I was defective. After the odd conditions of my childhood, I didn’t know how to think for myself. I didn’t know how to make rational decisions for myself. I’m still excessively lost. I look all over the place for help. I searched for that help so much anywhere that I could think of. I looked at school,