Character Study 1

I step onto the campus for the first time as an official Bruin. I look all around me and I'm surrounded by a sea of  baby blue and yellow. I'm anxious and excited as I pass by the John Wooden Memorial building to my first class. To rewind back to a year ago when it was the start of my Senior year and I was overwhelmed and stressed practically everyday of my first semester. I remember not feeling like a "Senior," not looking like a, "Senior," or acting like a Senior. Then again, who am I to judge who I look like, feel like, or act like. I guess I'm allowed to feel the way I feel or act the way I act, but how other people see me and characterize me is different from what I think my reputation is and what people see it as. I was trying to hold my life together between school, volleyball, college stuff, friends, and family, sometimes I felt like shutting out the world and wishing I could freeze time to make everything stop or at least slow down. Even though the beginning of Senior year was stressful, I didn't want high school to go by so fast. I remember going to every home football game, dancing in the Decades Day rally, and feeling a slight moment or relief when I finally pressed the send button on my college applications. I applied to 5 colleges, CSULB, SFSU, Point Loma, Cal Poly, and UCLA. Directly following that very moment as I submitted my applications, I felt as if the rest of the school year zoomed by. There went volleyball and football season, basketball season came and gone, then Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Then before I knew it I was in 2015 and I was 18 years old. Then came around college acceptance letters season. It was pretty exciting to get accepted to 4 out of the 5 colleges I applied to thus far, but I was still waiting on that one, my dream school. I remember waiting by my door every day at 4 o'clock to see the mailman put the mail into my mailbox and every day that passed I felt like it was a day longer that I didn't get in. Then the letter that would determine my future came into the mail on a Friday, I was planning on going to the Drive-In later with Hannah, Haley, and Juidth. When I finally held that letter in my hands, I wasn't excited, nervous, anxious, overwhelmed, or sad, I was completely numb. I sat down and stared at that envelope for a solid 60 minutes. I just looked at it thinking over and over again in my mind, how I would feel or react if I didn't get in. Then finally I found the courage to rip open that envelope and read the words, "Congratulations Sierra you have been accepted." I'm not an emotional person, I don't cry at sad movies, when I get hurt, or even at funerals. At that very moment I was so relieved, proud, excited, and happy, that tears of joy came gushing out and I couldn't believe what I just read. I called my mom, sisters, and told my best friends when I saw them later that I got in, and they all were happy but a little shocked at the same time. Then it was graduation time, the one part of high school that in a way I was dreading and sad about. Hannah Hurd, my best friend, said her Valedictorian speech and that's when it really got me, the realization that high school was over and everything that was a part of me at Righetti was going to be somewhere else now. I cried like a little baby that night, knowing that, that day was the last time I would ever see some of the faces I grew so used to passing in the hallways or the "friends" I made that I only spoke to at school. High school flew by like everyone told me it would and now I was onto a new adventure. The Summer as always seemed to go by even faster as it did before, even though I had an extra month. I spent it hanging out with my closet friends, going on spontaneous adventures, going to Italy, and making memories. Now the time was here to get back to reality and face what lies ahead. I chose UCLA, obviously, and every moment leading up to this exact time and place, where I'm officially recognized as a Bruin, has been only a small pebble in an everlasting road, that is my future.