Personal Narrative Of My Flaws

Having grown up in a time and within a society where the terms fail and lose are rarely spoken to children in any aspect of their lives, I generally considered myself a success in everything I did. I received medals, ribbons, certificates, awards, and trophies for academics, sports, and for just being a kid. So in my mind, for the majority of my life, I was unaware that I had failed or lost at anything. And having a father that is a U.S. Marine, failing and losing were not things that I wanted to tell him that I had done. Now that I am tasked to determine how I have grown from my failures, I realize that I have failed, that failure is not the end, and that I have excelled in several areas of my life due to what I have learned from those failures.

I don't quite know what to write. Is this my new-found ambivalence? Is this the way I self-defeat? The way I distract myself every-time I need to do something fucking important? In all honesty yeah, probably. My utter portrayal of my core attributes all seem to point towards that self inflicted wound being dealt everyday known as procrastination. No; what's the right word for it? Lack of self motivation? My overall absence of willpower? ADHD? No that's not it. It's my own self reflection: enforced constantly, always. It's the reason I write: to self-reflect. The reason why all of my fuck ups bother me: weighing me down. Why all of the good attributes I have I tend to become arrogant about. It's a sad thing; to want to kill yourself but also

It’s been three hours while I sit here and stare at the blinking bar, symbolizing the fact that I have nothing. My page is blank, but I promise you, my thoughts are not. Thousands of ways to start this essay have run through my mind, but none of them are sufficient. Which, I suppose, is where I will begin. Perfectionism, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is, “a disposition to regard anything short of perfection as unacceptable” (“Perfectionism”). It is a trait that numerous people might regard as desirable or something to be proud of; a word used to describe oneself on a resume to impress employers. However, I see it much differently. Perfectionism is a fight for something unobtainable, a cyclical trap in which disappointment reigns, and

As I stood on the outside of the arena watching teen girls traditional finish dancing, my stomach filled with butterflies. I walked into the arena as the announcer says “Next up teen girl's jingle,” with all the other dancers in my category. It was Sunday, the last day of Indian Summer Pow Wow, and my last contest for this pow wow, this year. Although I was nervous, I was also filled with happiness, confidence, and gratefulness. “Take it away boys” the announcer says. That’s when I knew that the drum group was going to start playing and this meant I had to start dancing.

I have always assumed that being a perfectionist was a good thing. From an early age I became enchanted with the “Charlie Sheen mentality;” I had to be “winning,” or at least convince myself that I was. An internal voice encouraged me to be the best that I could be, and failure, quite simply, was not in my vocabulary. However, as I prepared to enter high school, my innate desire to be a perfectionist truly acted as the anchor that slowly weighed me down. I learned that perfection was undeniably unattainable in my life; my devotion to “perfectionism” led me astray on a long, twisting path of deceit. I occupied my time with unchallenging schoolwork and “cheated the system” by electing to compete in the baseball league designed for kids a full year younger than me. As it turns out, trying to be a big fish in a little pond was the way I insulated myself from failure, the way I falsely convinced myself that I was “winning.” I was afraid to try, or rather I was afraid of the possibility that I might try and fail. Attempting something difficult carried the risk of not succeeding, and with it the implication that

It was record breaking temperatures on this July 4th day. Red, white, and blue filling up the stands. Fans and umbrellas protecting spectators from the heat of the sun. It was about game time and I was getting ready to take the field for the last home game. Butterflies in my stomach, but I had to tell myself “it’s just another game”. Even though in my heart I knew it was not just another game.

Not that I wasn’t happy with the choices that had led me to this point in my life, but I knew that I was destined for greater things than a “Doc on a Boat”; another nameless enlisted member of the naval medical community serving three years of sea duty on a constantly revolving door of new check-ins and farewells. Working long hours on little sleep and crappy food is what boat life is all about. You are united as a crew by what is affectionately known as “The Suck”; a general catchall term that you can blame any and all problems on and one that you signed on for by receiving orders to a boat. Now there are three types of people that I encountered, those that love and are borderline addicted to the suck, those that tolerate the suck for the

One of my strong points in writing is coming up with ideas and knowing how to get started on a paper. I guess you can say I am a free writer. Whatever in my head ends up on paper and I could write about a lot of things that matters to me or upsets me and feel passion when writing it down, but there also a weakness that I can’t overcome because my inner critic come along with it. Which makes me completely change and overshadow my own writing. I have a problem with revising and not being able to see the flaws in my writing, but that’s not it. I overpower one topic with another one in other words I would mash up two topics that is the exact opposite of each other which contradict my whole paper. The other problem is shorting up a sentence as well

People constantly let me down. I constantly let myself down. I have been like trump and built a wall around my life. You on the other hand have a superpower no other person has. You can phase through walls, and you have mine. You're the only person I trust to not let me down. I want to keep you that way. I don’t want to take away that superpower or I will be all alone inside my walls. Your different Ashleigh. I am getting all mad about the smallest things because around this time is when I have been starting to get cheated on. So I am paranoid that I am going to lose you like I lose everything else. I don’t try to get worked up, it is just my inner self telling me “Hey! Remember that thing that happened around this time in your relationship. Yeah, it might be happening again.” But everytime that happens, you just walk through those walls and make everything better. You make me a better person. Instead of having those walls maybe you can help me build a window and a door and stuff so I can start to open up again. I want you to be the person to do that, and you have those

Reading these pages and the documents were interesting and they definitely helped me realize my mistakes in my writing. I always get nervous whenever I write an essay and it stresses me out if I made a lot of mistakes.

My keys strengths are my customer service skills and my ability to work under pressure and meet targets on a time bound schedule. I have a very good work ethic and determination to achieve high for my company.

Drew is always supportive and caring during difficult times. In early December of 2014, My Grammy was in the hospital for about ten days with pneumonia, before she transferred to hospice. This was very tiresome on myself and my family. Even though Drew and I had just began dating, he made sure my family was doing well, and continuously asked if there was anything he could do for us. I was at the hospital every day, and mostly sitting in the waiting room. On day, Drew brought me a large strawberry smoothie from Dairy Queen, and stayed and visited with me in the waiting room. This helped me to get my mind off of my Grammy, and cheered me up. In 2015, I got very sick with bronchitis, and had to miss almost a week of school. Drew made sure he picked up all my missed assignments, so I did not miss too much.

As I was scrolling down my pictures on VSCOcam, an editing app that has been my favorite for a few years not, it struck me yet again that one of my themes for this year was authenticity.

There was also two red lines starting where the holes were and going up. I thought it was weird, and that the teeth got dragged up on my skin or something causing those lines, but I don't know. My mum didn't really seem too concerned about the bites. Then the spot where I got bit got harder, and then it burned a little or something because I think I felt it. I looked a little while later and it had a bump on top where the bites were about the size of half an egg, and it was really hard. I felt my lips were getting really puffy to the point where I could barely talk, so I told my mum to call 911.

In the first telling of my personal narrative, I did not consider including what had led me to a point where I began to embrace my identities and become proud of my heritage as Korean. There were many factors that led me to be who I am today. The reason for leaving out the information was because there were so many people and occurrences that led me to the point where I am now. For example, moving to different elementary school where there were more diverse body of students, annually performing at the Mosaic in the Korean pavilion, my parents being a positive role model, and becoming a volunteer teacher at the Korean Language School are some of the reasons which have led me to be who I am today. As I was surrounded by people who were interested