Ever since middle school, writing essays has been my curse, my bane. By essay, I mean the standardized school essay, the educational system’s method of bypassing the 8th Amendment, “cruel and unusual punishment.” When I am awake in the middle of the night, forced to complete yet another droning, useless assignment on whether Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is in actuality an evil character, or whether he is merely misunderstood, I look to the heavens and wonder; Am I merely the plaything of some otherworldly creature who enjoys tormenting students?
Writing has not always been boring or monotonous; instead it used to be a childhood joy, a means of expressing my inner thoughts. However, I have been forced to endure the oppressive and stifling restrictions of the standard school essay, imposed by the dreaded English department. The five paragraph essay is the imaginary penitentiary of my creative facilities, like an overbearing mother who still pushes her ten year old in a stroller. The dictatorship (this, of course, is an over-dramatization; my English teachers are not quite fascist) teaches a seemingly never-ending list of rules: you cannot use run-on sentences, do not use dangling modifiers, the passive voice is improper etc, etc, etc. However, there has always been a singular restriction that is paramount: “I”, the infamous “I”, the singular letter banished from the confines of proper essay writing. Despite a life long imprisonment, “I” am victorious and liberated. I have finally found freedom in this college essay, in the revolutionary subject, “topic of your choice”, where I am free to simply write. Who is this mysterious “I”, the subject of this strangely philosophical manifesto?
I am a man convicted, inspired, motivated to become something special, something memorable. I am an uncommon individual, a radically optimistic thinker, a person who can look at the world and imagine positive change. I have these dreams of grandeur, but “I” am simply the subject of my autobiography, a self description, or within this essay, a self deprecation.
I am a vast list of oddities: I rebel against conventional thinking, I dislike the drudgeries and consistencies of repetitive assignments. I have the ability to eat enough on a daily basis to put Joey Chestnut, the man who ate 60 hot dogs in twelve minutes, to utter shame. I have the cartoon-like ability to literally annihilate a bucket of chicken wings (extra spicy, of course.) I am a Republican (I deeply apologize, for I have no control). If the reader has not noticed yet, I tend to be overly sarcastic and dramatic. I am no workaholic, no man preoccupied with the drivels of over-exertion. However, I do provide one extraordinarily rare, redeeming quality, hope – hope for originality and hope for change. I have but one ambition, a humble desire to change the world.
“To change the world” is often a meaningless statement made by beauty pageant contestants or an unrealistic, unfulfilled promise declared by so many disloyal politicians. I am no wispy idealist, nor a raving revolutionary; I simply want to make the world a better place.
I am the future. The beautiful, the magnificent I am, not the I was, but the definitive I will be.
Keys
11 years ago
