SN&R’s 2015 College Essay Contest winners!

Kids today. What with their digital obsessions and crazy-weird music and unrealistic dreams and demands.

Yeah, right.

This generation faces myriad challenges that those of us in older generations can't even begin to fathom—not the least of which is our increasingly tech-influenced shape-shifting work culture and an uncertain financial future.

The students who submitted entries to SN&R's 2015 College Essay Contest—and let's be real here, these so-called kids are more adult than many of us were at their age, boasting a wisdom that belies youth—taught us something about what it means to survive adolescence in the modern age.

We read stories about loss and mental illness, racism and bullying. Many of the essays were heavy and serious but there was a sense of idealism, too—a silvery thread of optimism that made us cheer on their dreams and ambition.

It wasn't easy, but ultimately, through our blind-judging process, we managed to choose our first-, second- and third-place essays. The winners will receive cash to help defray college expenses—$2,015 for first place, $750 for second place and $500 for third place, from SN&R and our generous sponsors, InterWest Insurance Services Inc., GiveBack2Sac and Gilbert Associates Inc.

Read on for SN&R's 2015 College Essay Contest winners and excerpts from our honorable mentions. We're sure they'll instill in you a confidence in the class of 2015 and a hope for their future.

First place

Name: Madison Benner

Now attending: Da Vinci Charter Academy

College she’ll attend: Pepperdine University

Plans to study: Business

Personal motto: “Be kind, because everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”

‘My father had gone missing’

It happened on a Tuesday. I had been sick with the flu for the past week and was missing school that day. By the time I woke up, I knew something was wrong. When I went downstairs, many of my family’s closest friends were already gathered in my living room.

My mother proceeded to tell me that my father had gone missing that morning, and no one could reach him. He had told my mother he was heading to work, but his boss had called to say he never arrived. My mom then told me to go back upstairs and check my phone. I was confused. Why was checking my phone so important when my father was missing? My father had texted me and my family three words that morning: I love you.

Immediately I was taken back to a moment about six months before, when my parents had told my siblings and me that my father had been struggling with clinical depression for about four years. I didn’t worry about my father’s depression much. I didn’t consider depression to be a true disease.

Not even an hour later, I would realize just how wrong I was to not consider depression a disease. From the top of my staircase, I heard the doorbell ring. It was a family friend, fully dressed in her police officer uniform. I heard my mother start to cry.

In that moment I knew my father had died, and I burst into tears as well. The next few hours were excruciating. Being one of the first to hear about my father’s death, I relived it with every person we told, including my two siblings. For the next week, my closest friends stayed home from school with me. I stayed at one of their houses every night for weeks, even after they had gone back to school. I just couldn’t stand staying in my house all day and all night, surrounded by sadness.

I was extremely lucky to have them by my side; giving me an escape from the sadness enclosed in my house and defending me from hideous comments kids at school were making about my dad’s death. To this day, I don’t know exactly what was said about my father. People associate suicide with a choice, when once you experience it firsthand, you realize that depression and suicide aren’t decisions. Depression is a disease like any other, and suicide is not a choice someone makes.

Right after my dad’s death, we were all too worried about what people would say and think about my dad to tell them what really happened. Instead, we said he was in an accident. Luckily, by the time people started to learn how he had really died, we had realized we shouldn’t be ashamed of his death. I know that those snide comments about my dad came from a place of misunderstanding about his death. Suicide isn’t a choice, and many people don’t understand that. I never truly understood depression or suicide before my father’s death. Depression wasn’t a problem to me before my father’s death.

Since my father’s death, I have become much more understanding of mental diseases. My father’s death was a controversial experience in my life, and forced me to deal with a lot of negative associations to depression and mental illness. I try not to let the misunderstandings about depression upset me, because I know that these people don’t consider depression to be a true disease. Being more understanding about these diseases has made me much more compassionate. I understand that everyone has a back story and do my best not to judge people, because I don’t know the world they come from.

Second place

Name: Alice Honig

Now attending: Davis Senior High School

College she’ll attend: Franklin & Marshall College

Plans to study: Public health and pre-med

One goal for freshman year: “Understand biology and chemistry a lot better than I do now.”

‘In the orphanage, my dreams and aspirations were born’

In my most vivid early memory it is 3 p.m., and I am standing in a row with dozens of other orphans. Today is vaccination day. We are waiting to receive our shots and none of us are very happy about it. These shots were nothing like the ones I get now. The syringe had a terrifyingly long needle that the nurse used to stab each of us.

After the torture was over, I would walk around to each of my friends and be their “Band-Aid,” taking my small hand and putting pressure on the spot that was bleeding because the orphanage could not afford even such simple medical equipment. This was how many children in my orphanage group contracted hepatitis B. Poverty makes diseases spread.

My life began in Uralsk, Kazakhstan, in an orphanage. During the time I lived in the orphanage, my dreams and aspirations were born. In the orphanage there were children of all ages, races, and mental and physical conditions. A few of the children had serious health problems and birth defects, but those children were my friends, slept beside me at night, and played with me in the daytime. I noticed this and said to myself, “When I grow up, I’m going to be a doctor so I can help them get better.”

As I grew older and moved to California with a family I could finally call my own, my life changed but my desire to become a doctor did not. I volunteered at the local E.R. and then last summer I joined a nonprofit educational organization called Global Glimpse through my school. For three weeks I traveled to León, Nicaragua, with 24 other students and leaders. My time there reaffirmed my decision to pursue a medical career, and it also helped me realize that I needed to study international public health.

In Nicaragua my group did a Community Action Project (CAP) in a small village on the outside of León called La Goyena. The village is so poverty stricken that the only job the men can get is working long hours at the nearby sugar plant. The town entirely lacks simple clean water, which leads the residents to get potentially life threatening diseases. Other villagers get sick because the sugar plant pollutes the air and water. No doctors reside in La Goyena, meaning that no proper medical attention is available. Living among the people of La Goyena brought back memories of the conditions under which I had lived as a child. In the orphanage, I had endured a painful and dangerous vaccination process but the children in this village didn’t even have vaccinations.

Unlike most children from impoverished backgrounds, I now have the privilege of getting a great education at an excellent American college. There are a lot of subjects I’d love to study just for my own interest—filmmaking is a real interest of mine, for instance. But because of my own background, I am determined to use my opportunities to pursue a course of study that will help me give the gift of health to those who haven’t had the luck I’ve had. At the age of 5, I had dreamt of becoming a doctor but never thought in a million years that I could succeed; but now I can make my dreams and aspirations a reality.

Third place

Name: Martin Kyalwazi

Now attending: Jesuit High School

College he’ll attend: Columbia University

Plans to study: Neuroscience

One goal for his freshman year: “Get on Humans of New York!”

‘I began to fight the preconceived notions about black America’

In fourth grade, I walked into my bathroom, looked at myself through a clear, wide mirror and wished I were white. The wish resulted from the frustration I felt with my disposition at a wealthy white school immersed in a wealthy white community.

My dad always told my older brother, sisters and me, “You are not like them,” referring to all my white and wealthy classmates. But I wanted to be. I wanted their seemingly worry-free lives waking up to electricity, running water and a pair of parents arguing about what vacation home to buy and not about how to keep the only home they barely had.

Yet I couldn’t be like them. In fact, I was far from it. I was instead the son of two Ugandan refugees who fled the wrath and ramifications of Idi Amin. They met in Sacramento years later, began a family, and with the little money they had, started a small business called Cafe Le Monde. Since I was 6, our cafe was my playground: sweeping floors was my swings and wiping tables, my slides. I wish I was appreciative of this labor from a young age, as it put food on the table and gave me the fighting chance to attend great schools. But I wasn’t. I was bitter. Bitter that my childhood couldn’t be spent playing carelessly with friends. Bitter that I didn’t even have the childhood I saw my friends enjoy. At that age, I could only conclude that things would be easier if I was white.

My wish only strengthened in middle school when negative stereotypes about African-Americans started to flood the spongious minds of my peers. Black became synonymous with ghetto, and as the only black student at my school, I could feel the aura of that subconscious sentiment permeating from my friends and their parents. Even my accomplishments, such as making the honor roll and being elected school president, were met with a certain patronizing congratulations—as though my successes as a black student were the biggest oxymoron they had ever heard:

You’re pretty smart for a black guy.

Those stinging moments made my mentality towards my race change quicker than my parents fled Idi Amin.

When I entered high school, I discovered racial stereotypes could either be reinforced or diminished by my example. I could not and would not tolerate these false perceptions that were somehow being accepted as dogma. So instead of wishing I were white, I began to fight the preconceived notions about black America.

In that pursuit, I ironically became the “whitest black kid” students had ever met. With each of my successes, whether academically or co-curricularly, I became whiter and whiter in the eyes of my classmates as though black men could only be gangsters, rappers, and athletes. Despite all my efforts, I was mocked for not measuring up to the stereotypes of black men, as if they were valid and I was not. Few things infuriated me more, but that fury became my fuel and motivation, propelling me to resurrect the Black Student Union in order to help my brothers out through mentoring, tutoring and collaborating—essentially having their backs—in hope that the more we pursued excellence, the less black students’ success at our school and beyond would only be seen as the exception to the rule.

I know today, just as I knew then, that my road ahead will be filled with the bumps of brutes and bigots, but as I embark on my journey, I am assured my trials and tribulations will pave a smoother path for those after me. When I step into that same bathroom and look into that same clear, wide mirror, my gaze fixes upon a young African-American man trying to purify the black waters of racial prejudice in order to reveal the transparency of truth—now fully aware that this is his only wish.

Honorable mention

Name: Insu Jung

Now attending: Sheldon High School

College he’ll attend: Princeton University

Plans to study: Chemical engineering

Fun summer plans: “Skydiving.”

‘What was an obstacle to my parents became my greatest strength’

“Cas9 is a protein used to cleave DNA, it stands for …” As I tried to explain the mechanism of the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing system to my peers in the Stanford Institutes of Medicine Research (SIMR) Program, I experienced a strong sense of déjà vu—I had been doing this my entire life. Well, not in the sense of scientific presentations, but more along the lines of having to communicate my thoughts to an audience who didn’t know “the language.”

The audience in question would be my parents, whose English skills were nonexistent when they left their life in Korea. My parents came to the United States chasing the American Dream—not for themselves, but for their children. The Land of Opportunity was not as inviting towards them, with my father toiling in unskilled labor and my mother staying at home to raise my brother and me.

Entering elementary school, I was placed into the ESL group. To compensate, I spent long nights reading books and sounding out the words on my homework. After hard work, I found that I could finally keep up with my native, English-speaking classmates.

My parents were also pleased, because now I could act as their English interpreter, their compass in a foreign land. However, I approached my new responsibility without enthusiasm, as the requests for clarification were endless: “What does this mean?” “Can you call this number?” “Why did they send this?”

One night, I woke up to a tense argument between my parents about overdue bills and overbearing finances. It was then I understood the significance of language. My parents’ struggle with the language barrier impaired their ability to get specialized jobs, leading to our financial instability. What was an obstacle to my parents became my greatest strength, the tool I would use to carve out our American Dream. As I accepted my role as the liaison between my parents and America, I found the best gift I could give was neither time consuming nor expensive. My spoken words came easily, and were mine to give, but the meaning they conveyed was invaluable to my parents.

Last summer, language again became critically important when I conducted biomedical laboratory research as part of the SIMR program. Working a 9-to-5 schedule, I learned the finer points of both pipetting and my project, which revolved around CRISPR/Cas9, a genome editing nuclease which could introduce transgenes into cells. However, when it came time to communicate my preliminary results to my peers, my mouth was like quicksand: the information was trapped. All my life I had dealt with the English language barrier, and now I faced another, scientific, language barrier.

I saw the parallels between my past and present. As I had before with English, I immersed myself in the nomenclature and the biology of my research, taking it upon myself to master this new tongue. With so many diverse topics, communication of ideas was fundamentally important in science; an unclear thought would lead to disaster. With my newly built foundation, I was able to break down and fully understand the complex material presented to me. Armed with my new expertise, my second and final presentation to my peers elicited a response that my parents knew well: comprehension.

I come from two worlds: one of unfulfilled needs and financial hardship, and the other of innovations that will one day change the former. Though they are different, I have learned from both that language can either impede or pave the way for ideas to be shared. I keep these moments of enlightenment with me, as they link my past to my hope-filled future. This future comes from the potential of the American Dream, which I strive to make a reality. My actions speak not only for myself, but also for my parents, whose sacrifices have made all the difference.

Honorable mention

Name: Savannah Tellander

Now attending: Sheldon High School

College she’ll attend: California Polytechnic State University

Plans to study: Agricultural and environmental plant sciences

Personal motto: “Be the person you needed when you were younger.”

‘Half-deaf, half-hearing. I would make the sign of parting my head in half, insisting that I could be both’

“Are you hearing, or are you deaf?”

This was the question first asked of me. Not, “What’s your favorite book?” or “What’s your favorite Disney movie?”

No. How good is your hearing? Rather, are you a product of your parents’ culture or a product of everyone else’s culture?

When I did answer, I was always indignant. Why can’t I be both? Each time, I would assert myself and say, “No. I’m half.” Half-deaf, half-hearing. I would make the sign of parting my head in half, insisting that I could be both—that I could identify with both my deaf family, and my hearing family.

The thing is, the sign for “half” is similar to the sign for “God.” Yes, you read correctly: when people asked little 5-year-old me what her hearing capabilities were, she answered with, “No. I am God.”

It was a problem. It was hilarious. Just try not to laugh when a kid insists that they’re the second coming of Christ.

The hilarity of it overshadowed the statement; no one asked why I considered myself both. Hell, no one even considered that I could be both. There was no dual sense of being available to me; it was one or the other. This dilemma followed me for a few years. In fifth grade, I stopped wearing my hearings aids. Who needs an audiologist when you have an elementary school kid assessing your hearing for you? Can you hear me now?? How about now? It was like a never-ending Verizon commercial, with an extra bit of bullying.

There’s always a split in opinions—either that I’m either just fine without them, or that I really should know better, and it’s good for the sake of my hearing. They believe that they have jurisdiction over my right ear—that their concern gives them the right to push suggestions onto me.

Concern extends to the line that divides me. Shouldn’t I choose one side? It’s polarizing; I see judgment from both perspectives. I see how my mother is left out of conversation by her sister. Her own sister believes that is it a waste of her time to learn sign language. She believes it is a waste of her time to learn how to communicate with her sister—but my aunt still insists that she loves her.

And then there’s the pain of realizing that we’re more of a fad for hearing people—a cool language to learn. An excuse for people to ask, “How do you say [insert expletive here]?” They never stop to think that they’re crossing a line.

Or the pain when I realize that I’m not deaf enough. I’m not deaf enough to go to a deaf school, or deaf events. I’m not deaf enough to understand the struggle. I’m not deaf enough to really understand my brother’s feelings.

I’m not exactly hearing. I avoid the school cafeteria (it’s too loud for me to understand anyone). I sometimes need subtitles on. I’ve had years of speech therapy; I enunciate all my words, and take my time pronouncing my “sh’s,” “th’s” and ‘"fuh’s.”

The lack of a “niche” group made me search for common ground. I hated not fitting smoothly into one category or another. When I moved from Pennsylvania to my current school, I saw thousands of kids in groups I never expected to see. I realized that it wasn’t a matter of “fitting in” like a puzzle piece. It was a matter of molding myself to my situations.

I have found a sense of independence, and a sense of empathy. I have to walk a line between two worlds, and now, it’s more like a sidewalk than a tightrope. I don’t have to force myself into one side or the other; I can go anywhere I like—even if that means standing with a foot on either side of the line.

Honorable mention

Name: McKensie Rummel

Now attending: Sacramento Waldorf School

College she’ll attend: Richmond, the American International University in London

Plans to study: Film, theater and creative writing

Dream job: “Involves traveling, working creatively and connecting with unique and innovative people.”

‘I thrive in a clean, open, breathable environment’

My grandmother is a hoarder. Every spare corner or empty hallway in her house is cluttered with piles of stuff. That’s all it is: stuff. She never puts any of it to use, it just sits there collecting dust.

My mother hoards as well, and not in the way every mother keeps their child’s artwork or baby clothes. She collects empty egg cartons and broken furniture and scraps of fabric. I am not a hoarder, where my mother and grandmother see treasure, I see only meaningless objects.

I remember when I first became conscious of the concept of hoarding. I was 7 years old. My mother and I started a collection of broken glass on a summer afternoon out of boredom, and I remember looking over the collection a few weeks later and realizing that I had purposefully kept actual trash. I found that unsettling and since then have been very aware of material items in my possession.

I’ve moved quite a few times in my life; maybe that’s the reason why I do not take comfort in belongings that I’ve had to pack so many times. Since my parents’ divorce, I have been switching between their homes so frequently that I’ve learned to live comfortably out of a single suitcase. It could be claustrophobia, subconsciously not collecting possessions because I thrive in a clean, open, breathable environment. Maybe it’s the orderly side of myself, because I love to design, to arrange and rearrange my room or lay all my work out on the floor to study it. There is no room for any of those activities if every ounce of space is cluttered with things.

There is a contrast between the freedom of action and the imprisonment of things. I have found that the kinds of items people tend to collect have some significance in the past, like a reminder of a good memory. Because of the memories associated with the item, the item is given value, even if it is just a movie ticket stub or a threadbare blanket. It is okay to reminisce, I think it is a very human quality and much can be learned from the past, but if one spends all ones time looking back then how is one to move on in life. If one lives surrounded with objects from the past then how is one to find the space to create the future?

I do not form connections with material goods on the same scale as others. I do have respect for my mother and grandmother for putting significance into items, but I am content with focusing my time on making those connections with people instead of materials.

I pack lightly, in order to have a spacious environment to express my creativity. I pack lightly, because my belongings are not my home. I have the freedom to exist without reliance on my possessions. I pack lightly, because I want to focus on the present and future and less on the past.

Honorable mention

Name: Aubry Byrne

Now attending: Bella Vista High School

College she’ll attend: Sierra College

Plans to study: Nursing

Personal motto: “Make civil the mind, but savage the body.”

‘When we come together we are so much more’

The most beautiful place I have ever been to is Vans Warped Tour. Simply put, Warped is the place where misunderstood kids go to be embraced for who they are and draw inspiration from the men and women who are brave enough to put our lives into words.

Raspy voices of smokers singing in unison to songs of heartbreak, depression, and hope rise and fall around me. The bass rattles our bones, releasing pent-up emotions that animate themselves in the chaos of a mosh pit. Testosterone-filled boys slam bodies into bodies, only to stop suddenly and help pick up a fallen comrade.

A setting sun sets the sky ablaze with shocking reds and oranges, casting long shadows across the stage. A singers lips work their way into a smile as he looks down at hundreds of kids whose lives he has affected. We look up with adoration and admiration. Brightly colored hair and tattoos dot the crowd. We move as one—a heart beating to the steady pulse of the music.

A whispered “I love you” finds its way to my ears followed by the most familiar lips pressed against my head. He sends another crowd-surfer over our heads, taking special care so her feet don’t hit me. I turn to thank him, my best friend and boyfriend, letting my fingertips trail over his prickly cheek before turning back to the stage.

The smell of pot hangs in the air and mixes with sweat. Honestly, it’s not the most pleasant smell but, like his lips, it’s familiar. The faint tang of smoky air is washed away with cold water, soothing dry lungs.

We’re the pissed-off kids of a generation, the misfits, the broken, the forgotten and unwanted, the used, but when we come together we are so much more than that. We are a family who supports and understands each other. We give one another hope and strength through knowing smiles and steadying hands.

To most, this is just a concert. To us, this is home.

Honorable mention

Name: Krystal Lau

Now attending: Davis Senior High School

College she’ll attend: UCLA

Plans to study: Political science and communications

Fun summer plans: “Climb Half Dome in Yosemite with my brother.”

‘Nothing in this world is of permanence’

I cannot remember a time when this burden was not present. I cannot recall when my invisible fear that I would become like him first surfaced—a fear that had ingrained itself so thoroughly inside me.

My grandfather, Chang Fa, is a victim of Alzheimer’s. I make sure to say “victim” because I must remind myself it is not his fault. Today, he is decrepit—loose skin, sharp bones, gaunt face—and he walks with an uneasy shuffle, as if a permanent fear of falling clouds his perception. He was strong—tall, robust, swimming every morning in frigid water—and he would always join impromptu chess games, as if he constantly needed to put his intelligence to use or it would fade away.

Today my grandfather watches Bambi and cries. His eyes mist over, and tears run down his sallow cheeks. Yet it is as if water is being poured down his face, for his expression does not change. I watch this man, unable to connect him to his past self.

When I cannot tolerate this ghost of a former man any longer, I create images of my true grandfather. I piece together stories—retold dozens of times at the dinner table—and home videos buried in the attic. There are clues everywhere, as if God assembled a scavenger hunt for me to trace his past. He was a factory owner, and communists labeled him as a bourgeois during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was interrogated and forced to watch Red Guards ship his wife to a prison camp. I imagine him standing in the black snow, staring solemnly with that grave face he always held in photographs, not waiting for the train to leave sight before trudging away in his rubber boots, ignoring the gawking bystanders. He would return to an empty, dust-filled home, remove his fedora, and begin to write—dignified even in the face of desperation.

But he survived when so many others died. He arrived at the Promised Land and began anew. Here he starts to appear in shots of home videos, which I watch with eyes trained for hints. Here in America he laughed; he sang; he coaxed me to eat when no one else could. He began to swim laps every day at the local gym. Yet slowly—skulking quietly—dementia crept, first in forgetting where the keys were placed, then in wetting the bed, and then in forgetting the name of his granddaughter.

But there are moments of clarity, like bursts of flame from a damp match. At times he begins to pray, earnest and heartfelt, and I cry in relief. At other times he calls me over to say thank you, and I feel like a sack of potatoes in my heaviness. As I look into his eyes, the pity and guilt slips away, for only the outward appearance induces shame, and stripped away, I catch glimpses of a man I respect. I want to love him, but I understand now that it’s more important to show love by learning from him, imitating his sense of resolution and integrity.

My grandfather would be ashamed to see his physical and mental deterioration. I’ve learned there is no culprit to blame, that it’s not some punishment from God or karma; it’s a reminder of our transience. Although our senses may argue contrarily, nothing in this world is of permanence. Not the dollars saved in my bank account or my long black hair. And I’ve accepted that, because now I place greater importance not in my material matters, but in my beliefs.

I am aware of the hereditary nature of Alzheimer’s, yet I try to live not in fear of the future, but in awareness of the present, in that I hope to leave a legacy like his. For the people who love him won’t remember him for his dementia, but for his steadfastness and enduring dignity.

Honorable mention

Name: Savannah Hastings

Now attending: C.K. McClatchy High School

College she’ll attend: California Polytechnic State University

Plans to study: Modern languages

Fun summer plans: “Going to Japan with my Japanese class.”

‘I couldn’t understand what had changed about me’

“Slut” rang through my ears as I walked down the crowded hallway. I wondered what oblivious girl in slightly too-short shorts this insult was meant for. I looked down at my cardinal-white-and-silver cheer uniform. Oh.

I wondered how a person could call someone they’d never met such a derogatory and hurtful name. Even if you knew the person, all the shame and social connotations that come with this word make it unthinkable, to me, that it would be used by anyone. Nonetheless, maybe if they had met me they would know that I’ve never even been kissed.

I had always felt out of place in my uniform. This outfit that supposedly bonded me to a whole group of girls had really only alienated me from a larger group of people. After becoming a cheerleader I was accused of things I’d never even tried, excused for things because “she’s just a dumb cheerleader” and overall judged solely on the fact that I wear a spangly outfit to school on Fridays for football games and “don’t actually play a sport". After being socially bullied, I was left with a much more cynical world view. As someone who has tried their whole life to restrain judging people based on their appearance, to then be ostracized myself was a shock to my system.

Until I became a cheerleader, I had never been accused of being dumb by someone who actually meant it. For a long time, I couldn’t understand what had changed about me. Did those tryouts in May really turn me into all the things society thinks cheerleaders are, but I was just too stupid now to notice?

On the inside, I still felt like the girl who had gone to nationals with her middle school debate team, the same girl who’d grown up watching Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, the same girl who’d still never even been kissed. Due to this new sensation that my intelligence is constantly in question, I found that I would work twice as hard to prove my mental worth. I would volunteer twice as much to answer a question if I was in uniform than when I was out of it. I felt hyperaware of what I would say, at least while I was identifiable as being a cheerleader. Though thinking before you speak can be a good thing, all my sentences were thoughtfully laid out, scripted, artificial.

Always neutral, “Yes I like that band, but I wouldn’t consider them my favorite.”

Always polite, “No, cheerleaders don’t just yell stuff and dance around, but thank you.”

And always grammatically correct, “Yes please, I would like fries with that.” While my new self-awareness can be beneficial, more often, however, it makes me feel self-conscious, like I am performing.

While elements of cheering have made me more cynical, or rather more realistic, cheer has also helped to shape me as a person. It’s made me judge people a lot less just based on their interests, because I know how it feels to be judged based on mine. I think it’s also made me more of a feminist, and shown me the hypocrisy in those who claim to be feminists. Part of being a feminist is believing that women can be and do and wear whatever they want. When other girls judge me for being a cheerleader, it’s clear they need to remind themselves that feminism is a two-way street.

Honorable mention

Name: Anthony Orr

Now attending: Union Mine High School

College he’ll attend: UC Merced

Plans to study: Political science

Personal motto: “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

‘The odds of my success were subpar’

I was born three weeks after my mother turned 18, the son of a party girl and a paranoid schizophrenic, bipolar, methamphetamine-addicted man. The odds of my success were subpar, but I eventually came to realize that through adversity I might develop the strength necessary to advance and become successful in my endeavors—perhaps more successful than those who had been more fortunate in the circumstances of their births.

Throughout my early childhood, my parents bore the consequences of the lives they had lived previous to my being. The financial struggles, social isolation and additional stress of caring for a child mounted, leading to frequent quarreling between my parents. When I was 5 years old, the burden became too great for my mother. She took me and left. Not until recently did I realize the full extent of the ramifications of this decision.

For the remainder of my childhood, I had no regular father figure to rely on and so had little opportunity to develop any idea of how to be a man. The result was the birth of my intellectual curiosity. I knew I needed to utilize every learning opportunity that I was presented with to its fullest potential. Through my uncle, I learned how to fish and hike and came to love the outdoors. Through another uncle I developed a love for science. My grandfather taught me how to do yard work, and my friend’s father taught me how to maintain cars. Not only did these men help me to build upon my extrinsic knowledge, but so too did they provide the basic elements which comprise the foundation of my being. I learned to appreciate a diversity of opinion as I compared and contrasted the behaviors and driving ideologies of the men around me. I came to know men who were meek and men who were assertive, cheerful and grim, courteous and rude, stoic and melodramatic. I embraced the traits I respected and, as a result, came to develop a balance within my own personality.

The consistent scarcity of money that I experienced also served to aid in my development. Through it, I learned the value of hard work, of frugality and of generosity, and also developed ambition. Hard work, because I would never get anything that I wanted unless I worked for it. Frugality, because I could never afford to want too much and so had to save for only things that I could not do without. Generosity, because we had need of help often, and I am always ready to give back when I am fortunate enough to be in a position to do so. Ambition, because I did not enjoy the adverse conditions of my youth, and through a combination of hard work and good decision-making, I can raise myself above poverty and be able to give back to the community and improve the lives of those around me.

The difficult circumstances surrounding my life did not serve as a bane so much as a boon. I learned much more than I could have otherwise and I am eager still to pursue my education so that I might protect myself and others from the hardships that I experienced as a child.