such great heights.

Ive had this picture sitting on my blog as an unposted blog for quite a while, I guess I was just waiting for the right moment. But maybe this isn’t really the right moment for any of this. But we are capable of such great heights.

and I refuse to come down, compromise or give up.

There’s a quote i put on my blog for about 5 minutes before i changed it, its from the new frontiers, a band alessandra gave me and in one of their songs, the vocals sing “I burn my wings on the sun when I fly.” I personally think that quote is pretty sweet. But anyway, the aspiration to do greater things has imposed itself on my heart this week. Especially on Thursday and Friday.

I got a nice smack in the face on Thursday by Isabel about my pride, and the most obvious thing occurred to me.

I am holding me back. my fears, my frustrations are boiling away as anger, and I am wasting my capability to fly. Greater things are within reach, but as long as I let the darkness, my self perpetuated prison to continue I will never rise and face the day.

And I think if there was ever time to say it, its now. I just finished trying to salvage my parents relationship. And really to no avail, and to be honest, it hurts so much that I almost want to give up. I want to just throw in the towel at 6:59 pm and come down.

But, I know that I wasnt wired that way, I wasnt created and loved just to let the monkeys on my back dictate to me if I will fly or not.

It isnt a question of wings, its a question of effort.

And we as humans will forever have that effort hindered until we throw it all away. all of our fear, our baggage, it all needs to go out the window and fall,

and we need to jump the window and fly.

and realize such great heights.

Chicago.. bound?

It’s been 17 years and I still haven’t seen snow. I mean not counting TV or in a movie, I haven’t made a snow man, hurled snowballs or even just let specks of frozen rain dissolve on my tongue. And what makes that fact even more pressing is that I’m in the minority.

During the winter months, temperatures drop around the country, but seems only here in South Florida, that we are blessed enough to experience the full extent of the sun year-round. Not that it’s a bad thing, but it really does restrict my view and understanding of nature. In this aspect, I am in the minority. I say minority not in shame or anger, I say it with joy because ignorance is really another word for the possibility of change.

Being in the minority ethnically is very similar. Although I can’t just change my ethnicity or deracinate all racial prejudices, it’s my decision how I will react to being African-American. Though I only see a wet and dry season here in Broward County, my lack of frigid tales isn’t binding, it’s simply a matter of experience and choice. And the same applies to being in the ethnic minority. I can stay put, refuse to face the day and be trapped in the confines of dominant ideologies. Or I can rise, abandon the darkness, and see the sun rise in all four of the varying seasons. The choice to view the world differently is something I think the University of Chicago strives to do.

And for this, I am interested in the University of Chicago, because it goes above and beyond to truly attempt to accept a person; not a number, not a test score, not an ethnicity. The essays, in their intricacy and possibility, challenge me now to choose to go see what this University is all about and why it is so different. Plus, in Chicago, I might just see snow.

my UCF essay

A great friend of mine once told me “Sometimes you’re just going to need to have thick skin about some stuff man, you can’t let everything hurt you”. Hearing this, I immediately saw that my friend, Jeffrey Gardner [a UCF Knight], was telling me exactly what I needed to hear, and not what I wanted. And from that car ride down to Deerfield Beach, full of the great smell of sea air at night and the sounds of ‘Death Cab for Cutie’, I began to understand what the word resilience meant.

I mean, I have always been what I consider to be a strong person; I never have a problem contributing in class, trying new things, or saying what I mean. But as I entered my junior year, I was hit in the face with stress from ever direction and I was slowly letting it bog me down and I truly wasn’t allowing myself to shine. And I remember talking to Jeff a few days before and he told me he was coming down from Orlando for the weekend and if I wanted to hang out, to give him a call. So I did, and he picked me up, we got some Wendy’s, hopped on the highway and went to the beach. In the car, I just started exploding with all of the fears and aches that had been piercing my heart, especially what was going on at home with my parents and some of the downright negativity people were practicing at my school towards others. And on hearing his advice, it was a consolation of sorts because he told me that he had gone through many of the same things and I couldn’t just let it bring me down because I would be giving all I was away.

And that is what I know I can contribute to the community of UCF, resiliency. The resiliency that allowed me to leave my frustrations with the destructive relationship that was shattering my mom at home, to regrasp my love for theatre and photography no longer caring about the opinions of others as I pursued Romanticism, to be there for friends I thought I’d never make as they weathered the storm of ridiculous  high school pressures and putdowns along with troubled homes just like mine and to have the strength to have true inner peace during one of my most favorite years of living until now. Perhaps my greatest reminder of this, is on my journal that I received for Christmas of 2007, on top of it there is a Polaroid picture of a cloud and some trees, and all around the picture are some scribbled quotes and thoughts, second to the top lies one particular quote that’s from a song I love called Love Isn’t Made that says, “Don’t let the panic bring you down”, and looking back at it now the panic and all of the garbage it brought along with it, didn’t bog me down too much , it didn’t kill me so I plan on bringing resilience and peace along with me to the University of Central Florida as a Knight so that there I can pass that along to someone else as Jeff did to me.