Pride goeth before a fall.

My pride, in this case, transpired (yes, I actually use that word in casual conversation. By the end of this, if you don’t believe me, I’ll have failed) a week or two ago. Having constructed my nth narrative, I felt as though the person did not exist whom I could not affect – in whatever emotional way I desired – by writing about something I had experienced.

I had considered various ways of testing this, but in the end each boiled down to one unacceptable reality: I would be playing. For the good of anyone in particular? Arguably yes, I say, for I would know the truth either way. The potential evil of the situation, however, required that I not play in just that way.

This situation presents itself to me in a way that is clearly not playing. I have two tasks in this piece: the first, quite simply, is to convince you that I am a person worthy of admission to your school; the second is to move you in the way I desire. The movement I desire, of course, is that you think to yourself (or yourselves) “This guy should be here”. The same means, the same end (at the true end), but perhaps different middles.

You have seen my grades and my courses: a large portion of my academic career. If you have met me, you have seen a glimpse of who I am (at only 22 years old I know mostly that there is still much I have to learn about myself). When you take away my physical accomplishments, all those numbers and trophies and belts (Tae Kwon Do) and the academic and other recognition, you are left with what is most important to me.

I received an A last semester in what I am told is the most difficult English class at this college and taught by a woman who lectured without notes or book but with spontaneously and at length. I was told to expect my research paper in that class to return to me covered in ink with her corrections, and told further that this would be the case regardless of how well I proofed that paper, how many drafts I went through, whatever. I wrote it the night before in a matter of hours on a topic I knew little about when I started (I’ve been researching for longer than most my age), and the paper itself had no thesis statement. I still have that paper, and she had two comments for me: one was that I needed to brush up on my MLA documentation and the other was “Great paper (but you knew that)”.

My mother, who has been in the communication industry longer than I have been alive, recently applied to graduate school and asked me to look over her essay. She also asked me to write a piece on doping in sports for her ESL class and – without seeing a sample of any kind – paid me for it. I have been published online and offline more times than I would like to count, and I have been editing (and tutoring) for students (and graduates) older than I since my freshman year of high school.

All of that is dwarfed by two single events in my life. One of them was last year and another was about five years ago. Most recently, a young man I know only online asked me for help and advice in coming out to his parents (he is bisexual). I cannot think of a parallel to this question due to the possibly catastrophic nature of the event (a friend of a friend committed suicide last year under almost identical circumstances – he was disowned first) and the intensely personal nature of it. Perhaps the closest equivalent to it would be a teenage girl going, alone, to her parents and telling them she was pregnant.

The difference between the two extremes of reactions is stark here and there.

That he trusted me with the information was an honor with which I may never be bestowed again. That he asked for my help was the greater honor because it took that trust and put it further in my ability to help him through what ended up being a grossly anticlimactic event.

Five years ago a girl came to me with the information that her father had molested her from age three to age ten (she was at this time thirteen). She was worried that her mother would not believe her if told, and that given the strain the family was then under considerable strain - her father had almost left not two weeks previous to this, and I had helped her to keep him around; I felt a very strong obligation to her here, obviously. I was able to not only assuage her to tell her mother but give her instructions on how to confront her father and, to the best of my ability, tell her what reactions each person would likely have. The man left their (the girl and her mother’s) lives and as far as I know she has not been bothered by him since.

Take every academic achievement I have, save one – high school graduation, as I wouldn’t have been able to help out bisexual teenager had I still been in high school. Strip me of every athletic accomplishment, an easier task by far since I was never that much of an athlete. Why? Because I am the only person who helped those two people through extremely trying and difficult periods in their young lives. Any number of people can graduate from high school or earn As in English 243 at MECC or improve their long jump four feet in a high school track season. I was the person chosen by the girl to help her confront her father as a child rapist, and I was the person chosen by the boy to help him come out to his parents. Regardless of what I have done for my own life, their lives are better as a direct result of knowing me.

This is where the question is answered, then. Have I fallen short of my goal, to myself and to you? Have I proven to myself that I can lift up in anyone the feeling of my choice? Have I proven to you that, beyond the numbers you have either looked at or will soon look at, I am someone who is worthy of a spot on Radford’s campus this Fall?

The answer will come in the mail, and either way I will pay for my pride.