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Challenges of adolescence chapter 6
Overcoming adversity
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College Essay I am someone who has experienced failure in my life and has learned from those experiences to become a better person. One obstacle i've gone through was my leap from middle school to high school. When I got to high school I had many things going on in my life, the biggest being depression. I was depressed for a couple different reasons, one being my brother who has Asperger’s was going through a tough time and was also depressed. Also at the time I was struggling with my weight, I was 14 and weighed close to 240 pounds, and honestly felt absolutely awful about myself. I was just not the person I wanted to be. My grades were poor and didnt like the person I saw in the mirror. …show more content…
I was 14 and felt like I shouldn’t be feeling depressed and nowhere to turn. So what I did to try to fix this was devote myself to becoming more physically fit and active. I knew I didn’t want to be this way anymore and started running 3 miles every day 7 days a week. I also cut my calorie intake and the weight just started flying off of me. The first week I lost almost 20 pounds and I felt incredible, I felt like I was on my first step to becoming on who I wanted to be. I stayed with this running and healthy eating and in 4 months and lost an astounding 70 pounds. I couldn't believe I transformed myself in such a short period of time, I really accomplished something
Although a personal statement is supposed to be mine, in the back of my head, I was thinking that an admission officer would look at this sheet of paper I had written and base my admission on it. Then I felt that although this was supposed to be my story, it was not really what I wanted to say because the purpose was to please someone else. At a certain point, all creativity was gone and my only goal was to have a perfect personal statement. The need to have a perfect personal statement did not allow me to write an essay that was truly me. I already had my mind set that I was going to write what I thought the reader wanted to hear instead of what I truly wanted. I decided, however, that although the two questions of “Is it good?” and “Does this suck?” Barry presents would haunt me for the rest of my life, if my personal statement was not truly me, then I was getting into schools for the wrong reasons. It was surprising how, for so long, I struggled writing this life-altering essay and when I just let it go, and started writing without worrying about perfectionism, I “…was both there and not there… and the lines made a picture and the picture made a story” (124). I was able to write an essay that mattered to me as opposed to something that was a misguided version of myself.
Under certain circumstances, being tormented about one's weight can be the foundation of other issues as well. For children growing up it can be especially difficult. There can be many social issues involved as far as making friends and participating in various group activities. Once school is finished, finding a job can be another challenge. By reason that the person may feel they are not good enough and furthermore may be apprehensive of the interview process.
By eating the Dash Diet on a consistent basis and being more consistent with my exercising, I gradually lost 30 pounds over the first six months
I was a healthy average size pre-teen but I viewed myself as HUGE and that I needed to lose weight. I turned to magazines like Seventeen that are full of healthy foods, and weight loss tips and exercises. I wanted to look like the models in the magazines and on television.... ...
I was ten years of age the first time I deemed that I needed to lose weight. My family and I (Mom, Dad and younger sister) were on a ski trip with another family (mother, father and ten year old son). We were all getting fitted for skis and boots and the store associate fitted us asked what I weighed and my mom told him. I overheard the mother of the other family informed the associate what her son weighed and at the age of ten I weighed a little more than the boy at ten years of age, so the message that I chose to believe was that “I am fat, and I am inadequate”. The exploitation became a part of my personality, I was treated poorly as a result of the way some of the kids in my fifth grade, but the overweight portion was entirely different. This is the first recollection I have of thinking I needed to lose weight, however my eating disorder behavior did not start until my sophomore year of college.
Frail, boney, and hardly able to move, my junior year of high school was dominated by an eating disorder, trapping me in a prison of self-destruction.
In August of this year I had my application to Texas State complete and ready to submit. I was only awaiting my most recent SAT scores to send my final submission. When writing my essay describing a circumstance or obstacle in my life, I explained how I had been fortunate enough not to have any major adverse events in my life and went on to explain how the most conflicting moment in my life being the day I started at a new High School.
The stage of adolescence contains major changes which can bring stress, confusion, and anxiety. Feelings of self-consciousness, low self esteem and comparison with peers start occurring during this time. Along with the physical changes there is also hormonal and brain changes that affect the adolescent physically, mentally, emotionally, and psychologically. During this time a person can feel tremendous pressure to find their place in the world among a great deal of confusion (“Eating Disorders and Adolescence,” 2013). Body image concerns and peer pressure are heightened during the period of adolescence, and are potential risk factors in the development of an eating disorder. While eating disorders can affects males and females of all ages, the average age of onset for Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, and disordered eating takes place during adolescence. These disorders are often a coping mechanism for people to attempt to gain control of their situation when they feel helpless among other aspects of life (“Eating Disorders and Adolescence,” 2013). Eating disorders in children and teens can lead to a number of serious physical problems and even death (Kam, n.d.).
Life is an amazing thing just like Jeannette Walls’ in The Glass Castle. Add a sentence about her hardships. People are awesome and we do many great things in life. Some of us go on to making and creating amazing inventions and other gadgets. Some of us go on to doing heroic things with our life. Well all have great and amazing moments but sometimes we have not so great or even tragic events. I 'm not going to say I 've had it the worst like Jeannette, but I 've definitely have a story to tell.
My problem (being fat) started who knows when, but I did start to realize how fat I was in middle school. I had a lot of friends and we all got along well, until we had gym. That one semester virtually killed me. It was seventh grade. We would all change in the locker room. On the first day, the students made fun of all the guys on how they were chubby. I was made fun of too but I didn’t genuinely care, it was just plain fun. That’s when the fat jokes started. Day after day I was ridiculed and belittled a lot. I didn’t feel good in my own skin; I didn’t feel at peace anymore.
12 pounds was a new record, however, it’s still not good enough. I thought I would harbor this sense of pride or great accomplishment; that I would be happy with who I am and my life, but there was just another goal to obtain. I needed to fit into those jeans I wore when I was 14. I need to be able to look in the mirror and not feel inconsequential of the reflection. I craved to be
Since I was a child, I have struggled with my weight. I went through my childhood being
Being overweight is not optimal, no matter what age. Even in elementary and middle school it can have a huge impact on someone’s life. Being overweight, I decided it was necessary to take control of my diet, and start working out. Along with this I became too focused on a number on the scale. During my junior year of cross country, I put 600 miles of training under my belt in the summer, and went from a weight of 145 pounds to a measly 128 pounds. With the mindset of, the lighter I was the faster that I would be, I soon learned that I was not actually helping myself. During cross country, I was always cold in class, and learned that I simply was not getting enough food in my body. After visiting a doctor and having a blood test I learned I was anemic. I was not getting enough iron in my diet, and it was hurting my performance and destroying the great potential of all the training I had put into cross country that summer. After cross country, I decided I was “bulking” and figured I would eat anything I wanted. By New Year’s Eve I was weighing around 160 pounds, and felt terrible. Putting on over 30 pounds in a few short months did not set me up for success. After wanting to get healthy again I began to cut my calories to a very small amount, much under my maintenance calories. This shortly led to late nights waiting for everyone to go to bed so I could spend long periods of time in the kitchen eating foods that made me feel good at the time, but made me feel terrible the next morning. I had developed Binge Eating Disorder and lost my healthy relationship with food that I once had. It was a long process, but eventually I found inspiration on YouTube and other social media that led me back to healthy eating habits. I began to track my calories again in the MyFitnessPal app almost every day, and began to gain confidence back in myself. I used resources to
It still haunts me to this day, I have had so any relapse of my eating disorder because I think I'm fat or someone says something about my weight. For almost I couldn't get over 120, I didn't perfect and lunch, and at dinner, I maybe ate seven bites. It made me even more depressed because I thought to have a good body, and it made me a really bad person it really did. I stop hanging out with my friends and even when I did hang out with them I was snappy or I wasn't myself when I went out to eat, I would eat so much that in the middle of dinner I would puke. I wasn't a happy person.
Failure happens when something isn't successful. Failure is a thing that all people can learn from. Failures can be used as lessons so that the failure will not be repeated again. One of my greatest failures in life that I've experienced and learned from would be from the time of my first grade year. I didn’t take school seriously when I was in the first grade and made terrible grades. After this failure, it made change the outlook on school and I started trying. I learned that I need to take school serious or else I will do bad in school. This failure lead to success in school and I started making good grades which will help later on in life.