Personal Narrative: Determination

I believe determination makes even the most out of reach goals achievable. I’ve learned this through experience, and although my stubbornness gets me into trouble sometimes, it also has helped me do things I’d never dreamed of happening otherwise. When I was eleven, I got my first job. I’ve been working ever since, and have managed to pay for everything from a laptop to an international trip. I’ve seen Phantom on Broadway, Yo Yo Ma in concert, and cruised the Amalfi coast with my high school orchestra. These are all things that were typically unavailable to my family, but I was determined to go. I worked as a babysitter, dog groomer, and a cashier to finance my various adventures. While this determination has taken me around the world, it has also helped me closer to home.

Last year, I started my search for the perfect college.

I quickly found it, but there was a big problem: this school cost an absurd amount of money. Now, from a young age, I had been told I probably wouldn’t be able to attend college. It simply wasn’t something our family could afford, and I understood that. Nevertheless, junior year was filled with ACTs and hours of studying in order to earn academic scholarships. I worked harder than I ever had before, preparing for AP tests for classes I hadn’t even taken just to reduce the cost of school. Despite being fully aware I might just be getting my hopes up for nothing, I applied to a few different colleges. Then came the hard part: waiting.
One by one, I heard back from the schools. Somehow I’d been accepted into all of them, including the one that felt most like home. I was over the moon, but the financial aid hadn’t arrived yet, so I couldn’t get too excited. Then one day a letter arrived. Not just any letter, mind you, but the letter containing financial aid information from my dream

school.
I stood there, holding the letter with shaking hands. I steeled myself for the possibility of failure, and prepared for disappointment. I held my breath, and, with the help of a letter opener, took out the piece of paper that would decide my future. When I read it, I burst into tears. As it turned out, my hard work the year before had, quite literally, paid off. The extra testing and studying and practicing had actually accomplished something. I would be attending a school with a $56,000 cost of admission for a very small fraction of that. I was bursting with pride at what I had done, and I owed it all to my determination.
I could have given up. I could have just accepted that college would be too expensive and I couldn’t go, and that would be that. But experiences like this, though not all of them quite as extreme, have taught me to never give up. Sometimes determination can only get you so far, but you’ll never know unless you try. More often than not, I think you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised.