I Shall Overcome :: College Admissions Essays

My teacher, my favorite teacher, my source of inspiration and stability, tells me I may wake up tomorrow and be happy. Perhaps so - I've been wondering lately if I'm manic-depressive, and such a drastic shift in temperament would fit the pattern. Â   But today I drift upon an endless, empty sea of despair. Like Blanche Dubois, in A Streetcar Named Desire, I have no cleft in the rock of the world. Â   My family never says I can succeed - my own mother tells me that I never know where I'll end up. When I look around me at home, where I live, all I see is people who have given up. From the group of old men who get drunk every night, to my friend who has the ability, but not the drive, to do her schoolwork so she can attend college, all I see around me is people who have lost the will, the ambition, to do something more than merely exist. Â   Even at school, I see it. Friends who, for no other reason but laziness, choose a community college instead of a four-year university. Teachers satisfied with saving only certain students from the tyranny of other teachers and administration. Â   And within myself. Even as I sit here, lamenting my own anguish, the class swarms busily around me, engaged in a debate I should be involved in, too. Â   I've temporarily conceded to the weakness I despise in others. But I have also realized that being and doing all the things I expect of myself does not guarantee my happiness.