<p>Hi ok so I just wrote a really rough draft of my college essay and I'm looking to get some feedback if I should change the topic and stuff like that. Right now its 793 words so I know I need to cut it down but ALL FEEDBACK IS HELPFUL you can be as mean as you want I dont care!!! </p>
<p>Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?:</p>
<p>I can’t remember a time when sports weren’t taking over my life. I guess that was the reason my parents got me into them; it gave me something to do. At five years old playing soccer was the fun activity I got to do with my dad on Saturday afternoons. However, as soon as I turned six it was a totally different story. Suddenly it became this intense sport where if you couldn’t keep up you were kicked off. I thrived off of the competition, as did everyone else on my team. From the minute the team was formed everyone knew we were going to do tremendous things; we even had a personalized name by the director of our program himself! We were the Colchesters. Year after year I would watch as old girls got cut and new ones came on, each better than the one before them. Six years laters and I somehow managed to stay on the team. I had gotten so close to all of the girls we felt like one big family, but there were only 3 of us left from the original team. I should have seen it coming - I did see it coming - but I couldn’t make myself face the truth.
Of course there were a few signs: the distance my coach seemed to be putting between us and the position change from left back to left bench.
The email came late one spring afternoon. It was getting close to summer, the sky was still lit and I was sitting on my bed with my computer on my lap. I wasn’t the one to receive the email so when my dad came home I was confused as to why he was acting so weird. I went into his room to say hello when he told me the news. I had been cut. Via email. Six years and all I got was an email. It wasn’t personalized or anything; it just said, “I’m sorry to inform you that your services are no longer needed on this team.” I was confused for a brief moment; it could have been a joke, right? But of course it wasn’t. With one email I lost my friends, my drive, and more importantly my confidence.
What was I going to do now? I didn’t want to play anymore, I didn’t want to go down to the B team, and I certainly didn’t want to hear about what other people had to say. I used to pride myself on being on the best team. Everyone knew I played soccer; what would they think now that I got cut. I shouldn’t have been worrying about what other people thought; but I was a typical middle school girl, always aware of what people were saying. When I went back to school the next day I couldn’t face my teammates, thankfully many of them didn’t live in my town. There was a sort of awkwardness whenever I would pass my former teammates in the hall. They said the obligatory, “You didn’t deserve it” or “I didn’t see that coming!” But it was obvious they were just trying to be good friends. Because of the awkwardness we didn’t talk much for the rest of that school year, I just wanted to get the Colchesters out of my head.
I was dead set on quitting, I was so embarrassed! It wasn’t until I talked to my parents and especially my teachers that I realized I had to keep playing. Unexpectedly, my teachers’ opinions were the ones i valued the most, they were able to look at all sides of the story and helped me come to terms with the fact that I just wasn’t good enough for that team. I decided that I couldn’t give up on a sport that I had spent most of my life playing.
The B team wasn’t that bad. Coming from a higher team the girls knew I was good and would follow my actions. It gave me a chance to step up and be the leader I always knew I could be. There were no expectations, the point of the team was to have fun. Somewhere along the line soccer had stopped being that sport that I loved to play with my dad, I had lost my desire to want to play. While playing on the B team, I was reminded of why I fell in love with the sport in the first place. It helped build my confidence back up, enough so that I eventually tried out for a rival team of the Colchesters called TSF.
Six more years later and I’m still playing with my new team. This time though, its different. I play to have fun and win. </p>