1 Category 1: ENGL 1010

The final year of high school was often described as a time when everything finally falls into place, when students step confidently into the futures they have imagined for years. My senior year did not feel like that at all. Instead of clarity, I felt surrounded by uncertainty. Other students around me seemed to already know who they were becoming. They walked through the halls of Central High School with confidence in their steps, their voices buzzing with plans about majors, scholarships, and long-term goals, while I felt as if I was still trying to figure out how to grow in the first place. Every decision about college and every question about my future carried a weight I could almost feel pressing on my shoulders. I felt like a seed pushing blindly through heavy soil, stretching toward light I could not yet see. I did not know where the right path was, but something in me kept trying to find it.

Every morning and afternoon, my walk to and from Central High School made these feelings even deeper. The path I took always brought me past small clusters of flowers, some planted, some wild, and some growing stubbornly through cracks in the concrete. The more stressed I became, the more I noticed them. I saw the rich purples, yellows, and reds glowing in the sunlight, colors so bright they pulled my attention away from my thoughts. When I walked close enough, I could smell the soft sweetness drifting from the petals, especially in warm weather when the air felt thick and full. Sometimes the wind blew just right, brushing the petals gently against one another so that I could hear a faint rustling like a quiet whisper. I could feel the cool morning air on my cheeks as I stopped to look at them. I even remember the gritty crunch of gravel beneath my shoes as I slowed my pace, wondering how something so small and fragile could survive in such unpredictable soil. The flowers fascinated me because they did not seem to question whether they were supposed to grow. They simply grew. Somehow, they kept blooming through heat and rain and rough patches of ground. I admired that quiet strength. Deep down, I think I hoped I could grow with that same determination. 

Looking back, those flowers mattered because I was slowly stepping into adulthood, even if I did not fully recognize it at the time. As a teen, I never questioned who I was or whether I was growing in the right direction. Life was simple and predictable. I woke up, went to school, and came home. But during my senior year, everything began to feel different. I became more aware of my surroundings, the echo of chatter in crowded hallways, the sharp smell of dry erase markers in my classrooms, and the steady hum of the cafeteria at lunchtime. Even the weight of my textbooks reminded me that bigger decisions were coming. I began questioning what I wanted from life, who I hoped to become, and whether I was capable of reaching the goals ahead of me. The world felt bigger and louder and more demanding than ever before. Growing up, I realized, was not about age. It was about learning to face change, uncertainty, and responsibility. That understanding came slowly through small moments, small questions, and small reminders, the same way the flowers reminded me that growth takes time and patience.

My family always placed a strong emphasis on education. School was treated as the pathway to stability and independence. My mother especially wanted me to have a future that did not include the struggles she experienced. Although I appreciated her intentions, the weight of those expectations often sat heavily on my chest. I had interests such as hair and fashion, but none of them felt big enough to build my future on. Whenever I tried to imagine life after graduation, my mind became cloudy, like trying to see through fog. I could almost taste the dryness in my mouth from the anxiety that came every time I thought too long about what came next.

One summer afternoon befor my senior year, all those feelings reached a breaking point. I had gone with my mother to her workplace in Memphis, a familiar place from my childhood. When we stepped outside after her shift, the heat hit me instantly. It felt thick and heavy on my skin. The sky was a blazing blue with no clouds to soften the sunlight. Kids had just been released from school, and their voices filled the air with high pitched laughter, the slap of sneakers on the pavement, and the steady clanking of swings in motion. I could smell the warm asphalt beneath my feet mixed with the dusty scent of the playground nearby. Everything around me felt loud and bright and almost overwhelming.

As we walked toward the car, my eyes drifted to the old playground I used to adore. The once bright colors had faded into dull peeling paint. When I lightly touched the metal slide, it burned my fingertips from the heat. The swings hung crooked, their chains squeaking softly in the sun. Even the wood chips on the ground felt dry and brittle under my shoes. The entire place looked tired, like a memory worn thin. Staring at it made me feel as if I were looking at a reflection of myself. I was no longer a child, but I still did not feel prepared to leave childhood behind.

With the heat pressing against my skin and the laughter of children echoing around us, I finally gathered the courage to tell my mother how lost I felt about college. I asked what she thought about me attending a trade school for hair, something I enjoyed and felt comfortable with. She told me it was not considered a professional job, and she did not want me struggling from paycheck to paycheck. Even though she spoke calmly, her words stung sharply, the same way the hot metal slide had stung my hand.

Trying again, I mentioned fashion, another passion of mine. She told me it could be something I did on the side. Each response felt like a quiet door closing in front of me. She was not trying to discourage me. She was trying to protect me. But hearing that my dreams were not enough made me feel small, like a flower trying to bloom in a place where no one believed it belonged. Something inside me shifted that day. As I stood there looking at the worn playground, I understood that staying in a place of doubt would not help me grow. I wanted to move forward even if it felt risky. I wanted to give myself the chance to bloom into someone I had not yet discovered. That moment was when I began taking college seriously. For the first time, it felt like an opportunity instead of an obligation.

My family had always spoken highly of MTSU. Relatives who attended described the campus as warm, welcoming, and full of opportunity. Back then, I never paid attention because college felt far away. But now, their memories echoed in my mind. When I researched MTSU, something about it felt right. The programs offered room to explore, learn, and understand myself without feeling stuck. When I discovered allied health science and technology, something inside me clicked. The field brought together everything I cared about. It involved helping others, hands on learning, and understanding the human body. It felt steady and purposeful and full of possibility, like sunlight finally warming the soil I had been struggling to push through.

Now when I think about the flowers I passed every day near Central High School, I understand why they stayed in my mind. They were never just flowers. They stood for every stage of my journey: childhood, curiosity, uncertainty, fear, and the courage to grow. Some days I felt bright and opening, and other days I felt wilted and unsure. But through every moment, I was still becoming something. Choosing MTSU feels like planting myself in the right soil, a place where I can continue learning, stretching, and blooming into the person I am meant to be.

I can’t remember his name, but I guess that’s not important here. A large hot drip with exactly 13 grams of honey is what he always ordered. No cream, no sugar, and his mug preheated with hot water. That’s who he was to me: just a smile, a nod, and the 95 cents he always threw in the tip jar. One day, he wore a shirt with a man on it. I asked who it was. He told me it was John Calvin. Oh no, I had taken the bait. Having grown up in the evangelical church, I knew that I had just signed myself up for an absolute earful about Calvinism. Great.

What he said shocked me. I didn’t really know much about Calvinism. As I handed him his steaming cup of coffee, he explained the concept of predestination to me. I listened, surprisingly. Like, I really listened. With no snide remarks or laughing him off, I stood there and absorbed it. Before you tune me out, no, this is not the story of how I became a Calvinist, or how I came to believe in predestination, but what he told me changed my perspective. He told me that before I was born, before I was a thought, a concept, or even a cell, the result of the end of my life was planned out for me. The moment I’m living now, the day I’ll have tomorrow, and the next 10 years of my life, none of it matters. He told me it might as well have already happened. He said that it didn’t matter how much good or bad I did; I was either a person of faith or born faithless. He told me there was no salvation for me to gain. There was nothing I could do to change gods mind about me, one way or the other. I almost cried. Maybe it was because it was 7 a.m., or the 2 hours of sleep I was running off of, or even the quad shot I had just downed. I really think it was because what he said validated a deep belief I’ve had my whole life. I’m damned. Doomed. Destined for something terrible.

It was as if, in an instant, all of it made sense: every experience I’d ever had in my life. All the times I felt like I was running full speed towards a goal, just to look down and realize the ground was a treadmill, pushing against me. Every time I felt inherently bad, like no amount of being good, or making people smile or laugh could change the genuine rotting, horrible badness inside of me. Not even in a cool, edgy, mysterious way. Just in the way that it’s always the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. Like my best kept secret. He finished his speech and sat in the same chair he always did. I wiped the counters over and over again, brows furrowed, thinking. I didn’t care about predestination or Calvinism. I didn’t even care if I went to heaven or hell or nothing at all when I died. But I do care about my free will. I do want to choose. I want to be the reason my life is everything I’ve ever dreamed, or the reason I hate it all. I need to look at what I have, and what I’ve accomplished, and who I love and know that it is mine because I made it mine. I have to be accountable for the things I’ve done wrong, for all of my failures, both for myself and others. Because if I am not accountable for my wrongs I cannot be celebrated for my rights.

Though, for just a moment, it felt good, comforting even, to let what he told me be true: I was predestined to be all the good and bad things I am. That it has absolutely nothing to do with me that I am intelligent, ungrateful, witty, stubborn, quick to anger, and maybe even quicker to love. That some god or entity randomly generated all of my traits and experiences and hit send without a proofread, leaving me with a messy set of clashing traits to live with. It felt good to be a victim with no clear perpetrator, to chalk up everything to being entirely someone else’s fault. I looked over at him, sipping his coffee. No, this is all his fault. I blame him. Sadly, I didn’t believe it. Though part of me wishes I did. I remembered reading once that you are a mosaic of all the people and things you have loved, and I think that’s true, though I’m also a mosaic of the people and things I’ve hated. I decided, still scrubbing the same part of the counter that I had been for the last 5 minutes, that I fully disagreed with him. That I will not trade my control to live guiltlessly. I am not a preplanned story. I have free will, and I can change. I felt freed at the idea that everything can be all my fault.

So, on some random Tuesday, I asked myself the hard questions. I looked in the mirror, at my friendships and relationships, at my job and my accomplishments. I looked at my face and my education, and I asked myself what I wanted to change. What did I want to begin to accomplish? What is my purpose? Who and what do I want to be? What kind of friend, daughter, student, partner, and member of society do I want to be? Do I want to be the friend my friends come to for advice? Do I want to be a mother? Do I want to be a lawyer? A politician? A journalist? Do I want to stay in Tennessee? Do I want to be the guy in a coffee shop wearing a John Calvin shirt that makes the barista cry? I still don’t know the answer to most of these questions, but I have gained a new outlook on them. I went home that day and applied to colleges. I decided I needed a change of scenery. I needed to meet new people and have new experiences. I wanted to change and grow.

I get to walk through every day knowing I get closer to finding the answers to my life’s big questions. Maybe tomorrow I’ll meet the next person who says or does something that changes my perspective again. Maybe that person will be me. So, when faced with the question “How did I get here?” I think I’d say, it’s all thanks to Mr. Large Hot Drip with 13 grams of honey. I don’t believe in predestination, but I do believe I’m exactly where I’m meant to be. Life is much more exciting, freeing, and rewarding when everything, good and bad, is all my fault.

I have always been someone who could figure things out on my own. Whether it was solving equations, understanding scientific concepts, or strategizing plays on the soccer field, I could usually rise and adapt to the occasion fairly easily. I was considered “gifted.” I always scored above average, passed every AP exam, got a 35 on my ACT, and graduated with a 4.6 GPA. Behind all that, there is only one thing I have never been able to master: writing. Not once have I enjoyed a writing assignment, and of course, I was not about to voluntarily do it. Now, reading? Absolutely—I’ve always loved stories: fiction, non-fiction, realistic fiction, memoirs, autobiographies—give it to me all! My most recent favorites are A Lesson Before Dying, Life’s Work, and When Breath Becomes Air. But writing is different. It’s slow. It’s frustrating. It’s like trying to explain a feeling with puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit. It’s never felt natural the way science, math, and sports have. Somehow, writing has always felt like the subject that forces me to confront myself—even though I’m still not entirely sure who that is yet.

I still remember the day I was pulled out of my English class in 3rd grade to go to the “Advanced Reading and Writing” class. My teacher, Mrs. Ward, had called my name out along with a few others, and she had an enormous smile on her face, acting like it was some kind of prize.  I thought it meant we’d get to do something exciting—author our own fun stories or read books from the middle school library. Instead, it felt dull and disconnected. I walked into Mrs. Lampley’s room, where there were only six other kids. The walls were practically bare, the air conditioner was too cold, and there were no books in sight—just worksheets waiting for me on the table. I sat at my assigned seat, with a sliver of hope that this class would be Harry-Potter-level magic. For the next hour, I stared at black-and-white paper copies with underlined verbs, subjects, and adjectives. One day, I asked, “Are we ever going to read any books?” Mrs.Lampley looked surprised and responded with, “Eventually.” I knew this meant we were never going to do such a thing. My hope was gone, and I spent every class gazing vacantly at the humdrum of sentence structuring, analyzing drably passages, and talking about authors I did not care about. That class wasn’t about imagination—it was about rules. In the end, I wasn’t being challenged, just drained. And for someone who has a natural love of doing, it was hard to sit still and overthink words on a page that numbed me. This was the beginning of my disconnect.

By high school, the pattern had fully set in. I kept taking the honors and AP English courses, not because I loved them, but because it’s what was expected of me, and at least they got my mind working a little harder. Reading was something I enjoyed—especially books with emotional depth or real-world grit. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines stuck with me long after I turned in my essay. I recall closing the book and just sitting there, the last page heavy in my hands. The quiet strength of Grant, the dignity of Jefferson, and the painful truth of injustice made me feel something that no math problem ever had. There was something hauntingly real about it, but even then, when I opened my laptop to write the essay, everything in my mind felt static. I knew what I wanted to say. I could feel it in my chest. But I’d stare at the blinking cursor for half an hour, typing and deleting the same sentence over and over again. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi hit even harder—it was personal, it was raw. I underlined entire paragraphs and dog-eared every few pages of this book. “What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?” Kalanithi asked. I didn’t have an answer—but I felt the question. Despite Kalanithi’s enthralling publication, when it came time to write my thoughts in an analytical essay, all the meaning subsided. It wasn’t that I didn’t have any thoughts; I just could not get them to flow onto the page the way I desired.

Senior year of high school was when things finally cracked. I decided to take an AP Literature course, and the teacher was known for being tough on homework, grading, and tardiness. Mrs. Long was always ready to deduct points for the smallest flaws. I did everything the opposite of how I should have, and she indubitably went harder on me because of it. I was late every day, I never paid attention in class, much less raised my hand, and I never turned in any of the assignments. Scratch that; I didn’t even look at them. I recall throwing every sheet of paper she handed out in the trash before I even left school grounds. It wasn’t because I was incapable of doing the work—I just didn’t want to. Writing felt like a performance, and I was tired of pretending. My grade depended on the tests, and I did not care one bit. I didn’t care because I had always been the perfect student and knew it wouldn’t affect me much. This was until I was brought into the counseling department, and they told me that if I didn’t pass the class, I would not be graduating. My head was spinning, my blood had run cold, and I grew angry, blaming my teacher. Graduation was two months away. That was the moment my mindset shifted. My frustration, my ego, my guilt—they all collided, and that vexation I had in me became my drive to do better. Not just better, but submit work made with optimum effort and even pass the class with an A. That was my new goal. I used the spite in me to push myself as I had before. Although this time it was different. Instead of attaining my goal to prove to strangers around me I am the genius they believe me to be, I did it so my parents would be proud, and I’d be able to smile sincerely alongside them at my graduation. Once I obtained that inspiration and motivation, I began seeing writing not as a task, but as something deeper. It wasn’t just about getting an “A.” It was about figuring out how to process things that couldn’t be solved with a formula. I went home and emailed Mrs. Long asking for extra credit and an extension. She refused both, so I had nothing but one last project that would hopefully serve to redeem myself. The project was to create a PowerPoint describing every aspect of the career I wished to be in. This meant adding different fonts, a myriad of colors, and thoroughly explaining the academic process of becoming a neurologist. I was given a perfect score on my presentation, and Mrs. Long then gave me an extra credit opportunity, seeing that I was willing to put in effort in her class for once. I satisfied my objectives; passed the class with a 92, scored a 4 on the AP exam, graduated with the class of 2025, and had the honor of hearing “I’m proud of you” from my father.

While all of this was occurring, I was also interning at Vanderbilt Hospital—learning, observing, absorbing the intensity of real-life experiences. My days were filled with beeping machinery, hurried footsteps, whispered conversations, silent sobs, and sleepless nights. I followed doctors into patient rooms, took notes, and watched them ask questions that didn’t sound anything like medical interviews. One day, a woman in her late 50’s sat curled up in her hospital bed, IV taped to her wrist. Doctor Jackson, the head cardiologist, asked, “What’s been going on Ms. Susan?” She didn’t list symptoms. She told a story—about being too tired to pick up her daughter from school, about the way her chest felt like it was caving in when she stood for too long, about the fear of missing her son’s graduation.  That’s where I realized the power of narrative. What Ms. Susan told Dr.Jackson was a narrative, not numbers, that made sense of her pain. So no, patients don’t just list symptoms—they tell stories. Doctors don’t just read charts—they listen. The realization kicked in: even in medicine—especially in medicine—stories matter. And suddenly, it made sense to me why books like Life’s Work profoundly impact its readers. David Milch’s honesty, his vulnerability, his ability to take a life of contradiction and turn it into something meaningful—that left a mark. It made me think maybe writing isn’t about perfectly polished words. Maybe it’s about having something real to say.

I’m still not someone who loves writing. Let alone call myself a “writer.” I still dread blank pages. I still overthink every paragraph. It still takes me longer than it should to write what I feel or to complete a paper. But I’ve come to see that literacy—real literacy—is not just about writing essays. It’s about paying attention to the world around you. It’s about empathy, connection, and slowing down enough to reflect. I don’t think I’ll ever be the kind of person who journals for fun, but I know now that writing matters—even to someone like me. Whether I’m annotating a dense text or scribbling observations during a hospital shift, I’m engaging in literacy. It’s the way I pay attention to people’s worlds, their silences, their pauses. It’s the way I slow down and try to understand things that don’t have immediate answers. I no longer see writing as the enemy. I see it as a companion—an annoying one, sure, but one that keeps me honest.

So maybe I wasn’t just “gifted” in the way schools and doctors defined it. Maybe my real strength has been adaptation—figuring out not just how to get the right answers, but how to ask better questions. Writing didn’t come easy to me, and maybe it never will. But that’s no longer a weakness in my eyes. It’s a process—one that has taught me patience, empathy, and depth. I’ve learned that some things aren’t meant to be solved immediately. They’re meant to be explored, rewritten, and lived through. And if writing helps me do that, then maybe it’s not something to avoid. Maybe it’s something to keep returning to—imperfectly, but honestly. So in the end, writing is the one thing that doesn’t reward quick thinking or fast answers. It asks you to sit with yourself, to feel something, and try to make sense of it with language. I’m still learning how to do that—and maybe I always will be.