The goal of the Pesonal Essay assignment was to use a symbol and a true story to communicate a specific element of my identity.

We chose to do this because it will more clearly show how we would read them and what images might pop into our head when we are reading it.

The Struggle

I am sitting in my room late at night. My glowing monitor is the only thing lighting up my room. I am like a ninja, trying to be as quiet as possible to not wake my family up. I make my finishing touches to an image of the main character of a show I have loved for a very long time, a ninja, that I had been trying to create for days. I struggle to fix all the things wrong with him. Changing an eye that looks like a lemon, fixing his giraffe neck, making his potato face look normal. I do this all alone in my room so that no one knows that I am working on it. Then once I am done with it, I take it out and it is even more surprising because they did not even know it was being worked on. Surprising people by overcoming struggle makes me proud.

Throughout my whole life I have always liked surprising people with amazing things. In Minecraft I like to do this a lot. Minecraft is a game where you can build whatever you want by collecting resources in the world around you. My friend once made a secret underground base that I found out about. Although, it was basically only a small underground room made of wood. I wanted to surprise him by completely upgrading his base. I extended the room by adding two rooms. One room with all the resources he would need, and another room with seats and a fireplace. The best part of all was that I had also made a secret room under his base with a bunch of awesome stuff. I did this all very sneakily so that no one would notice. Once he finally went down to his secret base he was amazed with how much stuff I had added and how cool it looked, and this was before I showed him the secret room. There was a secret button that opened a door to the secret room. In that room was all the stuff he needed to be the strongest player in the game. He was even more amazed than before. The thing that amazed him the most was how quickly I had done it. I had spent hours working on it, but it should have taken twice the time it took. It was very hard to complete this task, and I did struggle with finding some resources that I needed to use to build, but it was all worth it when my friend was amazed.

I also tried to surprise people with awesome drawings, but this was something that I struggled with even more. When I was younger I watched this anime called Naruto. I loved the show and was always trying to draw the main character. I would try all the time but it would never look good. Maybe his face was too fat, or too short, or even too long. Sometimes it would have no resemblance at all. Over the years every once in a while I would try to draw him again. Each time it would look a little bit better, but I was not completely happy with it. Sometimes I would try to start by drawing his eye or his nose. It resembled him but it just had something that was off. My uncle told me not to focus on the small details until the outline was done. With this advice from my uncle I tried to draw him this year and I was really happy with the result. No potato face, no giraffe neck, no lemon eyes, and the colors were just right. It was something that people liked and complimented. They were surprised at how much it looked like the character. This overcoming of struggle to surprise people made me proud. This experience has helped me to learn that I really enjoy surprising people. If you work on something in private and show people it will be even more of a surprise. If you struggle through this process it can be even more rewarding when you accomplish it. That is why surprising people by overcoming struggle makes me proud.