Personal Narrative

I arrived at practice with my shoes laced, hair pulled back, and the mindset that I was unstoppable. I could play against every member of my team and come out the victor on any given day. It was the first day of practice that week, and challenge matches were scheduled to begin. The team went through our daily shuffle of drills, conditioning, and running to prepare for what was lying ahead. While warming up with my friends, I felt great, talking about homecoming, boys, and a variety of irrelevant events. I felt ready. The odds were in my favor and nobody could stop me.

Sitting in a hospital waiting room, alone, afraid; and waiting for the news; would she be ok? Would she even survive? My nerves were out of control; my heart was beating through my chest, you could literally see it thumping through my top. The beads of sweat racing down my forehead, as if I was in the middle of the Safari dessert. I have been an athlete my entire life, yet I have never felt so physically drained. I look around, my eyes opening, then closing; as if I am coming in and out of consciousness, then suddenly echoed words begin to ring around my ear drums….” Sir…...sir, can you hear me? Sir please, we need to know what happened. We need to know what happened to her. Maybe my motionless state showed my

At the beginning of my freshman year I was attempting to develop motivation as well as seeking purpose and determining value. Whether in school or during sports or other activities and events in my life, I was constantly searching for motivation towards a goal or achievement.

Were I to name one thing unique about me, it would be that I’m one of the only people I know who can say from experience which is more difficult; writing a personal essay or surviving a life-or-death, take-no-prisoners spy shootout, complete with a crowd of bad guys, laser guns, and of course, a hero and a sidekick. I’m the sidekick.

I caused Greg to break his hand without any remorse at the time. Greg was a high school acquaintance who tended to bully me. He was significantly taller, stronger and more athletic; therefore physically bullying me wasn’t much effort for him. When I heard he was coming to work at the warehouse, I wasn’t particularly happy about it. The warehouse contained boxes from multiple suppliers. Some were really thick and some were really thin. They all contained books, though some were heavy text books while others were light weight paper backs. All workers with experience knew which boxes were heavy, which had thick soft cardboard as a box, and which were encased in thin cardboard. I waited until Greg stopped by with his working partner for

I woke up. Feeling groggy, I went to take my pills. Being the way my brain was, I needed pills to function. I see things, but others don’t see them. These things, they are right in front of my face, but they are not visible to other people. I could not find my pills, I looked everywhere, even in my drug stash. They were not there. Wait, I sold them to Angelo. Well, remembering this, I need to go to the drug store.

I was not an intentionally bigoted twelve-year-old. I was raised in an affluent suburban community where the vast majority of people are white. The 100% white private nursery school which I attended was chosen by my parents largely due to its proximity to our home. My public elementary school was about 70% white as it was populated with students who resided nearby. Finally, the private middle school which I attended, located almost an hour from my home, provided me with exposure to the most diverse student body of my youth as it was comprised of about 65% Caucasian children. What each of these formative academic experiences shared in common was both that their student bodies were disproportionately Caucasian, as well as that their senior administrators

The training ground was outside and depending on what we needed it for was able to instantly change its terrain. I walked over to a nearby basket and pulled out an old wooden bow and a quiver full of arrows.

My entire life I have always been the smallest person in the room. In elementary school, I was a four-foot-nothing, fifty-pound, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, pretty little wisp of a thing. My best friend, Michelle, was, in contrast, was a year older and nearly two heads taller than me, and outweighed me by at least once my own body weight. She also loved to wrestle and would take any opportunity to smash me in a wrestling match. These matches were friendly (if only in the sense that after they were over we would both stand up and go back to adoring each other) but nonetheless highly competitive. Looking back on it, she probably should have been able to kill me, but, try as she might, she never could - she didn’t even win more than half the time.

One Saturday morning I woke up to go hinting as usual every weekend. I climbed out of my bed with a good night’s sleep and got dressed. I made my way to the living room to drink some coffee with my daddy. It was in December so it was pretty cold outside. I sat around for a few minutes talking to daddy and watching the news on TV. We were arguing on who was going to hunt the “creek stand” as we call it. It’s a old box stand down a really long over grown trail that has been in the family for a long time. It is located in the wood yard hunting club in Angie, LA, my hometown. We finally got finished arguing and he said I could hunt the “creek stand”. So I went to my room and grabbed my Remington model 770 .270 caliber rifle with a 80mm Nikon scope,

“We don’t have anytime time to waste today guys, get moving!” my mom announced. My brother was coming today and she wanted the house to be spotless. We had just started fall break and I was in the fourth grade. I was playing games and relaxing like any 10 year old would do. My dad was lounging on the couch watching some show, and my siblings were running around. By then I had only 5 siblings, 2 sisters and 3 brothers. We had known for a while that Johnny, age 9 at the time, was coming to live with us, what we didn’t know was that he would bring with him a fish. I was happier than a child opening presents on Christmas. The fish was a beautiful white male betta with long flowing fins. He lived in a small 1 gallon tank with blue pebbles, pointy

I was sitting in one of my friend’s basement, talking, laughing and messing around like we normally do. Because the July heat was almost unbearable, we are all going to the beach later. My friends and I do a lot together and we have been a group since about 5th grade. Also my family and I share everything with each other, and we really like each other unlike some families who hardly tolerate each other. I have lived a pretty good life so far. I get good grades during the school year. There is also a chance that I will play college basketball after my last two years of high school. My life is heading in a good direction, and the whole world seems on my side. Then I get the phone call and know that something is wrong and that my life was about

I violently shiver as I stand near the stop sign, awaiting my morning bus. My stomach, which had been growling furiously since the afternoon before, is now quiet underneath the layers of jumpers I am casually wearing in sunny, 65 degree weather. Fingers trembling, I plug in the food I plan to eat later on in the day into my calorie counter app, my breath hitching as I realize that today is the start of a new life- a life towards recovery.

There I was, walking through the tall wooden door that laid open in front of me. I am about to work what seemed like, the longest seven hours of my life. The bright ceiling lights were shining in my exhausted eyes from a long day of school. As I prepare to punch in my seven-digit number into the register, I could smell the overwhelming scent of pumpkin in the air. Just as I thought, Dairy Queen has now started the bright fall orange seasonal blizzard, The Pumpkin Pie Blizzard. I can just taste the cinnamon in my mouth that is watering over the smell of the pumpkin spice.

As the evening progresses, the room fills with a variety of people. All ages, races and genders have come to this same location. Soon the