Notes

Dougie Tedros
College Essay
Hopefully this essay doesn’t feel like a déjà vu to you, but as long as it’s the truth, I don’t mind. Smile, because I think you, my friend, can handle the truth. Ok, let’s dive in. To understand someone, you must understand their past, so here is a part of my past. I’ve bounced around from different places in my life and have faced different challenges that have given my life depth and as my views matured, I’ve grown as a person. That same depth is what has allowed me to see through a different perspective and helped me enter a new and higher paradigm.
Born in Ethiopia, moved to North Carolina at the age of 8 and moved to Washington at the age of 14, so, you can probably tell what types of culture shock I’ve experienced. I’ve evolved with every move, but I do realize that I am not done growing. Moving before freshman year was the toughest thing I’ve faced, because I was in a mental fog and during class my mind was always floating off. It took me about a year and a half to get through it. During that time, I was quiet/silent at school and I looked at myself like a victim; but as I grew, I realized, it is a verbal world and I have to speak up for my opinion.
Although I am somewhat reserved, I am very transparent and honest with myself and anyone I spoke to. Even though I was 100% honest with myself, I never knew how people actually perceived me. I used to think people perceived me in a negative light which is a big reason why I wasn’t comfortable putting my personality on the line and just letting loose, but I have and I’m learning to become an optimist towards the unknown. It took me a long time to realize that there is no reason why I am not enough to apply to Universities. When my parents were super optimistic about how I can get into a university, I would pick my self apart and say things like, “but look at how bad my freshman year GPA was” and “Why would anyone want to read my excuses and my sadness?” I ignored the positives like how I showed growth and developed good life habits such as reading, time management, and staying healthy.
Freshman year, yes I made mental errors, but It does not compare to how bad I feel about the second semester of my junior year, because I became comfortable with where I was at academically the semester after I got my best GPA in my high school. After I had my academic growth spurt, I basically stopped drinking the hard work milk, which in this case was the reason behind the growth. Sometimes when things are going super well, we forget to do the little things and then when things start going wrong, we have no clue how it’s happening, but hindsight is 20/20. I have to push the envelope more instead of watching the deadline and working out a schedule that lets me be lazy. I have been trying to get rid of distractions to stay on my purpose (path).
Go re-read the first paragraph of this essay and see how much the first impression isn’t the full story. The first paragraph is a bit of a stretch, but I do not feel like I am done growing as a person or academically. Things are not always what they seem, so you must look at the big picture. Don’t think that the iceberg is just the iceberg, because the depth of iceberg under murky water can sink the ship that was supposed to be indestructible. All I’m saying is that depth is underrated but in time the size of the depth has to show or the iceberg goes below water. With beliefs, anything is possible.