Common App-2006
I have finally reached my 18th year. The time where I can hardly believe I have made it to the year where I can legally be called an adult. The kid in me still screams out even as my physical body ages, it is a sad occasion when I finally realize my hips can no longer fit down the playground slide as it used to, or the fact that I can no longer enjoy the swings because my legs are too long to fit comfortably.
The end of Year 11 signaled a turning point in life. No, the Earth did not stop moving and the Heavens did not come cascading down, but I did lose many of my closest friends. The ending of the exams was the prelude for the tearful goodbyes that would soon follow as we scattered to the different areas of the globe. Arguments over whether Frodo was happy sailing off for the Grey Havens would no longer ensue; neither would the laments over the latest business/chemistry/math test results. In short, it was the end of an era.
I realized as many others would that friends are what makes school memorable. The shared memories stay with you for the rest of your life and the bond created is unbreakable. Through my school life I’ve made the strongest friendships with the un-likeliest people, and to my utmost horror, enjoyed every single moment of it. I believe it should be prerequisite to have an Italian friend with whom you can tease about the correlation of nose sizes to location of hometown in Italy; or to have a Bruneian friend with whom you can strut the hallowed halls of school with a violin chin-rest balanced precariously on your head while pretending to be Gisele on a catwalk in Milan. That friend was a guy by the way.
To pinpoint a single person that had an influence on me would be fallacious. I am a hodgepodge of experiences encountered through the short years of my life. Even thought friends call me obstinate; I believe that I am impressionable, willing to take in the differences in beliefs and opinions thrown at me by my equally stubborn friends. I’ve been caught in the battlefield of arguments ranging from whether love really exists to whether eternal life would really be beneficial and survived to tell the tale.
We might live on different ends of the earth right now, but distance is not the culprit for most of us. The real culprit is in finding the five minutes needed to reply that email and this is where true effort lies; whether we still have the desire to keep in contact. It might seem sad that such friendships eventually die out but there comes a point where two paths indeed diverge. All that remains in the end are memories that were once shared as every single one of us forges new experiences for ourselves. But I will always go back to the same swings and slides and reminisce about Frodo and his Grey Havens.
Seems like eternity ago. Guess we all really have changed.
