By Allison Stein
To internalize courage is to embrace opportunities ahead without reluctance or regret: Courage means chasing those dreams that set one’s spirit free. As a senior in high school, I have spent too many years wishing and waiting for that mirage of the future to materialize before my eyes. Rather than working toward my dreams, I have invested my effort in goals more practical and objectives more attainable. In retrospect, my desire to conform to expectations has undermined a truer mission to make my own difference.
My goal is to be a writer, and my dream is to change the world in doing so. I have been told that to leave such an indelible impression is a lofty, if not ephemeral, wish, yet I am not afraid of my limits. In fact, I plan to search for those limits and to find them, for only then will I know how far my heart can take me—until I have discovered my full potential, I cannot be satisfied that I am living up to it. As I have pushed myself to discover those boundaries in my final years of high school, I have developed my vision to achieve a postsecondary degree in writing. I have come to acknowledge my own capacity to leave a positive impression and, moreover, my responsibility to make that impact. Perhaps courage is doing with my life not what is easy but what I was born to do.