Stop the charade ...
Reece Salmons (2016) is primarily responsible for one of the most memorable moments of my teaching career. It was after a long evening presentation of capstone projects on what amounted to the last day of high school. It was 10:00 p.m., my classroom was the only one lit on campus, and no one was ready to go home.
There was a feeling in the air. A palpable emotion. Everyone felt it at the same time: this was the last moment of high school. (For them, not me, but I was very much caught up in it.) It was right at that palpable moment that Reece turned off the lights, shouted, “Dance party!” and started playing an outrageous track: the Fairly Oddparents theme song (trap remix). The entire class, 15 of us, started dancing in a tight circle at the front of the classroom, laughing and twirling and hugging for the whole year. The evening ended like this -- in a big messy group hug. To get the full effect, you have to listen to the song.
So Reece has always had a flair for the dramatic. His college application process was its own kind of dance party, and he writes about that here. Like most people, Reece had goals and expectations that kept him grounded and motivated through high school and beyond. Reece came to find, however, that being too single-mindedly focused on a goal has its downside: it can blind you to other important things in life. Just ask Gatsby!
After graduating high school, Reece played for the UCLA Men’s Volleyball team, but made the hard decision to leave after his freshman year. Since then he has developed his passion for sustainability and conservation. He is currently helping to conduct research on plastic pollution, and he is active on campus in the fight to reduce plastic waste. He has taken on several leadership positions in sustainability in student government, student clubs, greek life, and nonprofits such as Surfrider Foundation and 5 Gyres Institute.
Here, he tells the story of discovering his real identity. “This post,” he said, “is about how my shallow college essay reflected a pattern of self-loss in high school and in college as well, and the realizations I’ve had while trying to rediscover myself.”
- C.H.
My college application process was unpredictable, to say the least. I had been playing volleyball
all my life and wanted nothing more than to play in college. I got a few looks from different
schools in corners of the country that I wasn’t exactly interested in going to. When things looked
like they were falling through in terms of recruiting, I had no choice but to apply to schools as a
regular student. Being my dream school, UCLA was an obvious choice, but it’s a tad hard to get
into. Much harder, actually, when you write an essay in which you try to frame yourself as a
much different person than you are. I thought I had written the essay that the admissions
committee wanted, but it wasn’t completely me--it was shallow and lacked passion.
This harkened back to a recurring theme in my life. Too often I focus on what I think other
people want from me, or what will make me feel more accepted or cool. It comes from a deeper
sense of insecurity and not knowing exactly who I am myself. I had dealt with this feeling before
in my life and thought I had an answer to my problem, but it’s surprisingly easy to forget who
you are and to lose track of your values. There are things about me that I still might not want
people to know, and that I might feel a little bit of shame for, whether or not those feelings are
justified. I constantly think about the way I present myself, trying and often failing to show myself
exactly as I am without any filters. It’s a mind splitting exercise, and at moments I really question who I am. But as exhausting as it can be, I think questioning your personal existence--your mental and physical state in relation to the world around you--is actually an extremely valuable exercise in maintaining your sanity. It’s easy to lose sight of that relationship and melt into the all too common Western mentality that we are just pieces designed to keep this machine running, but we’re not. Never stop questioning reality, questioning the norm, or questioning authority, because when you simply accept things as they are, you really are just limiting the amount value you can get out of your short life. “And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus -- and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it -- that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all!” Mario Savio’s words still ring true.
My rejection email from UCLA went a little like “We received many qualified applicants,
buuut blah, blah, blah.” I was heartbroken, not particularly surprised, but still upset. But when
you want something that badly, you’ll go to great lengths before you’ll let anyone tell you no. I
appealed the decision… and was denied again. And then, right about the point where I gave up all hope, I got a call from the volleyball coach. He said that there was an open spot on the team, and it was for me to take. I immediately said yes, and a few months later, I moved into my dorm. Finally, I reached my goal. Everything was supposed to fall into place.
It didn’t. My freshman year was full of up and downs. I was really happy at some points, probably a little depressed at others. I was repeating the cycle of losing myself, trying to mold myself to this new environment with new people instead of just accepting it and letting myself be. To make this worse, without having the time to have what I believed to be a “true college experience,” I grew jealous of people who seemed to actually be enjoying themselves. As these toxic emotions bubbled inside of me, I made the best decision I ever could have: I quit the volleyball team. And upon quitting the team, I also quit the pretending. And now I’m here, settling nicely into who I am and who I want to be moving forward.
So, reader, I’ll leave you with this: stop the charade. It’s not worth your time to worry
about other people want you to be. It’s not worth the money to buy what the rest of society tells
you to buy. It’s not worth the effort to conform to any kind of normality; it’s seriously just going to
make you miserable if you go down that path.
My college application process was unpredictable, to say the least. I had been playing volleyball
all my life and wanted nothing more than to play in college. I got a few looks from different
schools in corners of the country that I wasn’t exactly interested in going to. When things looked
like they were falling through in terms of recruiting, I had no choice but to apply to schools as a
regular student. Being my dream school, UCLA was an obvious choice, but it’s a tad hard to get
into. Much harder, actually, when you write an essay in which you try to frame yourself as a
much different person than you are. I thought I had written the essay that the admissions
committee wanted, but it wasn’t completely me--it was shallow and lacked passion.
This harkened back to a recurring theme in my life. Too often I focus on what I think other
people want from me, or what will make me feel more accepted or cool. It comes from a deeper
sense of insecurity and not knowing exactly who I am myself. I had dealt with this feeling before
in my life and thought I had an answer to my problem, but it’s surprisingly easy to forget who
you are and to lose track of your values. There are things about me that I still might not want
people to know, and that I might feel a little bit of shame for, whether or not those feelings are
justified. I constantly think about the way I present myself, trying and often failing to show myself
exactly as I am without any filters. It’s a mind splitting exercise, and at moments I really question who I am. But as exhausting as it can be, I think questioning your personal existence--your mental and physical state in relation to the world around you--is actually an extremely valuable exercise in maintaining your sanity. It’s easy to lose sight of that relationship and melt into the all too common Western mentality that we are just pieces designed to keep this machine running, but we’re not. Never stop questioning reality, questioning the norm, or questioning authority, because when you simply accept things as they are, you really are just limiting the amount value you can get out of your short life. “And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus -- and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it -- that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all!” Mario Savio’s words still ring true.
My rejection email from UCLA went a little like “We received many qualified applicants,
buuut blah, blah, blah.” I was heartbroken, not particularly surprised, but still upset. But when
you want something that badly, you’ll go to great lengths before you’ll let anyone tell you no. I
appealed the decision… and was denied again. And then, right about the point where I gave up all hope, I got a call from the volleyball coach. He said that there was an open spot on the team, and it was for me to take. I immediately said yes, and a few months later, I moved into my dorm. Finally, I reached my goal. Everything was supposed to fall into place.
It didn’t. My freshman year was full of up and downs. I was really happy at some points, probably a little depressed at others. I was repeating the cycle of losing myself, trying to mold myself to this new environment with new people instead of just accepting it and letting myself be. To make this worse, without having the time to have what I believed to be a “true college experience,” I grew jealous of people who seemed to actually be enjoying themselves. As these toxic emotions bubbled inside of me, I made the best decision I ever could have: I quit the volleyball team. And upon quitting the team, I also quit the pretending. And now I’m here, settling nicely into who I am and who I want to be moving forward.
So, reader, I’ll leave you with this: stop the charade. It’s not worth your time to worry
about other people want you to be. It’s not worth the money to buy what the rest of society tells
you to buy. It’s not worth the effort to conform to any kind of normality; it’s seriously just going to
make you miserable if you go down that path.
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