A Bit of Me

The one thing essential to who I am is my nearly constant struggle with the looming monstrosity of boredom. ​As an only child, I grew up learning to amuse myself through whatever means of imagination necessary. I could float from building castles and fending off hordes of evil wizards and knights to being a commando trudging from shrubbery to tree to sand pit. I never feel like that led to any spoiling of my character, quite the contrary. What that accomplished was a really useful trait that took a while to get used to. It let me amuse myself through the simplest of means, however it made an enemy of boredom. Whenever I got the slightest bit bored, I’d change gears. In my youth that led me to read books ranging from butterflies to ancient civilizations to engineering. As I grew, this became more of an issue. I have always been very aware of what I can and cannot do. Things that I have no aptitude are anything math related, foreign languages, and physical activity. So when my schoolwork, I inevitably turned to something that interested me and that inevitably led me into the less than usual pastimes of  a teenage boy. One evening could entirely be devoted studying the history of the political structure of the Venetian trade republic in the Twelfth Century, while another could be writing a blog post about the difference between Nazism and Fascism in detail and the large amount of research into how morally reprehensible both methods of governing are. I’ve become a voracious reader in the course of avoiding boredom. In the 8th grade I choose the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas for a free choice book report that we had two weeks to complete. It remains my favorite novel to this day. In short, my high school career has been rather lacking. Boredom drove me away from succeeding in simple tasks. My SAT and AP scores overshadow my rather mediocre grades. Although school work might not have been my main goal in the past, over the last few years I’ve tried to refocus my brain and work a little harder. Through everything I do, I try to prove to myself and the world that I am a learner. I will willingly attempt to learn anything from theoretical physics to world literature to history to political science to geography. Regardless of where I end up in terms of college and universities, I will be learning.