College Essay - Spring Term

Information Technology High School
Ms. Hyde
English E6
February 13, 2009
Michelle Lien
Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Through this experience of mine I have changed my ways of thinking, I now believe in myself and what I am fully capable of. In me I found inner strength, determination, persistence, and the will to never give up. I was amazed at myself and what I could accomplish, if I just put my whole self into it. Well I can proudly say what I have done is my biggest accomplishment in my life—so far. I believe there is more to come out of this fulfilling, inspirational, and self discovery experience of mine. This eye opening experience for me, started when my Physics teacher showed us examples of an old classes work for our upcoming project. We all turned ecstatic; right then I knew this was going to be one of those—“psh I can do that,” but then it turns out harder than we thought—experiences. After the demonstration, the classed turned into a, 75% sale at a mall on a Saturday, kind of crazy. Okay, very crazy—bustling, hustling, busy bee’s, we all moved around to arrange into groups of five or less. Naturally everyone went with familiar people, and then before I knew it there was only me and my close friend left. The chaos was so fast we both had no other group to join and were left to fend for ourselves. Both of us chose the easiest task to accomplish out of the five, to build a mobile robotic launcher. Which can move in all directions and the launcher can shoot a ping pong ball a certain amount of meters, which also has adjustable angles—all this done with a programmed remote control. The rest of the week that was all that people talked about in conversations.
As fast as they came, two weeks passed since the teacher assigned the project. Everyone had made some sort of progress and was putting their full commitment into it. While my partner and I started nothing, not even gathering materials yet. Then I came to realize that I was hiding behind my partner’s excuses making them my own. I was just hiding behind her absence as an excuse of mine, saying I couldn’t work or start if she wasn’t there. And that was untrue and I shouldn’t have thought like that, so I took charge of the project—going solo. My sudden realization of me slacking has influenced my will and I knew I didn’t have much time left too. But I forgot that I couldn’t swim, and I was already on the diving board about to jump into the pool. Having no idea or anything for that matter, I showed up afterschool lost. I first thought I would gather materials needed for my robot, in the middle of collecting my light bulb went off. How do I know what I need when I don’t even know what I’ll be building? Defeated, I sat down and thought of what steps I need to take before I do anything else that would waste my time. Then the idea dawned me, a blueprint! Draw what I would build and come up with design ideas but I didn’t even know how the robot operates.
I drove myself crazy thinking what is the very first step in all of this chaos. My teacher offered to help me, he advised me to go home and do some research along with giving me a guide book to read. I read the first chapter which told me how to build a basic base, which I became inspired to start my own. In all the excitement my mind wanted more, but only longed to find the missing pieces of the first part. I started on a blueprint and the following day after school, my plan launched into action. But my teacher asked me for the number of parts I needed and it was as if he spoke to me in a different language. I didn’t know what he had asked me; at that point I knew I should’ve read the whole guide before jumping steps. Again I tried diving into a pool without knowing every step of how, so I went home defeated once again but determined to get this right and finish my robot. Repeatedly this kept happening, and by the end of the week, little to no progress has been made. I began to get sick of me failing over and over again.
Even though I had to always take two steps back to take one step forward. In the end, my will and persistence came through to let me finish the project. I might add pretty successfully—I had accomplished what was needed to be done with excellence. Although my process and progress was not much of a winner, in the end I had learned a lesson that no teacher can teach. Self progress is my way of naming it, but I have also achieved a self goal during that time too. Now when an obstacle comes in my way, I know that if I fail, it’s not because I didn’t try my hardest.