I am most proud of how I stayed on the swim team for all four years of high school. This might sound like a weird thing to be proud of - especially when, judged by someone else, I have a lot of other (arguably) more impressive achievements: I've organized countless school-wide events, I'm on the National Honor Society, and I was elected the secretary of Student Council. But all of these achievements are things that I did on a whim: things that I enjoyed as I was doing, and probably would have done without the 'achievement' at the end. I'm not saying they were easy - because they were not - but, in many crucial ways, the decision to stay on the swim team was a lot harder for me. It was also probably the best decision I could have made. The lessons I've learned from the team have been beyond invaluable to me: I truly believe that the team has made me into the person I am today. First, I learned endurance. I don't just mean physical endurance (although I learned plenty of that: freshman-year me, who came last in the shortest events, could never imagine I could keep up with club swimmers in distance races), but mental resilience. Going into freshman year, I had it pretty easy: I was a really book-smart kid, going into an academic school. In every way that seemed to count (test scores, teacher approval), I was coming out on top. In swimming, I was, hands-down, the worst person on the team. It was an extremely humbling experience: coming last in every race, and one I'm very glad for. After all, in life, it doesn't matter how many times you lose the race: even if you're panting and nearly drowning, and everyone else has already hit the wall, the only thing that matters is that you keep moving forward. But the most important lesson I learned from the team was how to be a team member. Being social was not something that came easily to me, so for the longest time, I really made no attempt to understand the people around me. In the swim team, I didn't get that choice - we didn't just swim together: we won and lost together, we cried together, and we dove into freezing cold water at an unholy hour of the morning together. For the first time, I really tried to understand people's motivations: why people left and didn't leave the team, why they swam, and why they gave up. I realized I had a love of understanding people: of learning their stories and motivations. Honestly, I think that's part of what drove me into the study of international relations: because, while we all work independently (like the swimmers on a team, all competing against each other), the world wins and losses as a whole: humanity thrives or dies not as nations, but as a people. Just like how, at the end of the day, my team wins and losses together - nobody's fault, but everyone's responsibility. Through swimming, I learned to stick with the hard things (like the 6:00 AM practices, and the ice cold water (no heater + winter sport = freezing swimmers). And that will serve me as I pursue a career in international relations, making the world a better place, no matter how hard.

One issue within my community that I've taken the initiative to address is the state of the public high school pool. It might seem like a trivial matter, but to the swim teams of all the public high schools in my city, it matters immensely. Of the six public schools in my city, three have swim teams: and because of horrible sanitary conditions and a general lack of funding distributed to high schools, only one has a working pool, that all three high schools share. Now, it's not a good pool. It's not even an okay pool: we swim in the middle of winter, without a functioning heater. The locker rooms haven't been cleaned in decades, and, because no-one checks the chlorine levels, the water is nearly noxious. We were all scared to bring anything up, because we thought the sanitation department would shut down the last pool the public schools had. Despite this - despite all the horrible conditions, the swimmers of all the High School teams persevere. We always come to practice, work our butts off - and regularly place above the private schools in county competitions. Then, last year, we heard the pool was going to get shut down for a week for 'repairs'. A week turned into a month, and pretty soon we were in the middle of our season, with no pool, no practices, and getting slower and slower for it. I had had enough. With the approval of my coaches, I decided to write an article about the abysmal state of our pool: and how the city had taken it away all together. I got it published in a local newspaper, raising awareness for all the public school swim teams. My team rallied, and attended a city hall to convince the local lawmakers to give us our pool back - or at the very least, tell us when we were going to get it back. At the very end of the year, we did get it back, and we've had it for all my senior year. I'm still working for a better pool, and there've been little improvements: chlorine adjustments, and a slightly more functioning heater. This year, I continued my advocacy for our teams: working with my teammate to get a follow-up article written, explaining the improvements we've seen, and the ones we'd still like to see.

I joined the swim team because of a coincidence. A girl I admired was paired with me on a history project, and revealed she was swam on a club team, and was going to join: so I joined because I did a little swimming in middle school, and I knew I would have a friend. It was a pretty spur-of-the-moment decision. It was also probably the best decision I could have made. The lessons I've learned from the team have been beyond invaluable to me: I truly believed that team has made me into the person I am today. First, I learned endurance. I don't just mean physical endurance (although I learned plenty of that: freshman-year me who came last in the shortest events could never imagine I can keep up with club swimmers in distance races), but mental resilience. Going into freshman year, I had it pretty easy: I was a really book-smart kid, going into an academic school. In every way that seemed to count (test scores, teacher approval), I was coming out on top. In swimming - I was, hands-down, the worst person on the team. It was an extremely humbling experience: coming last in every race - and one I'm very glad for. After all, in life, it doesn't matter how many times you lose the race: even if you're panting and nearly drowning, and everyone else has already hit the wall, the only thing that matters is that you keep moving forwards. Another thing I learned was self - improvement. In swimming, you're never really competing with anyone else: even in a race, you're in your own lane, and you're not necessarily competing to finish first (because a lot of meets have multiple heats), you're competing to have the fastest time. So the only person you're ever in direct competition with is yourself: and that's been a pretty valuable lesson to learn. Comparing yourself to others won't make anyone happy - either you're doing it to make yourself feel bad, or you're doing to make someone else feel bad, and neither is any way to go about life. But the most important lesson I learned from the team was how to be a team member. Being social was not something that came easy to me - so for the longest time, I really made no attempt to understand the people around me. In the swim team, I didn't get that choice - we didn't just swim together: we won and lost together, we cried together, and we dove into freezing cold water at an unholy hour of the morning together. For the first time, I really tried to understand people's motivations: why people left and didn't leave the team, why they swam and why they gave up. I realized I had a love of understanding people: of learning their stories and motivations. Honestly, I think that's part of what drove me into the study of international relations: because, while we all work independently (like the swimmers on a team, all competing against each other), the world wins and losses as a whole: humanity thrives or dies not as nations, but as a people. Just like how, at the end of the day, my team wins and losses together - nobody's fault, but everyone's responsibility. Though swimming, I learned to stick with the hard things (like the 6:00 AM practices, and the ice cold water (no heater + winter sport = freezing swimmers). And that will serve me as I pursue a career in international relations, making the world a better place, no matter how hard.

To me, being a good citizen means standing up for the values of your country. I don't mean blindly following the government: I mean the heart and soul of your country. America believes in freedom, in equality of opportunity, and in democracy. I believe in these things too - that's why I'm proud to be an American citizen. However, I don't always believe in the methods that the government uses to enforce these ideas, or the way that our government chooses to balance these values against public good. To me, independent thinking is also an important part of being a good citizen: to blindly follow the leaders of the country does not enshrine the values of democracy that our founding fathers so believe in. That's why I know that voting is integral in remaining a free nation. America is known as the "great democratic experiment", but this experiment only works if people play into it. Likewise, democracy only works if everyone believes in it: while our founding fathers worked tirelessly to create protections for the freedoms of the people within the Constitution, many of the systems they created only work if everyone plays by good faith: a good example is the discounting of the rulings of the supreme court during the Jackson administration. In this way, American citizens play a very active role in protecting our own freedoms: we, through voting, determine who will next lead our country. James Madison believed in the ability of the American people to choose well: not the individual, who can be swayed by untrustworthy people, but the collective, which is much harder to fool. Because of this, it isn't enough to just say "others will vote, and I don't care that much about the outcome anyway" - that is the false privilege of a person who lives in a free nation. But keeping America a free nation depends on actively practicing democracy, and actually voting. This is what the constitution means to me. I could say, as everyone else would, that it is the bravest step our founding fathers could have taken, that it is one of the most important documents in the development of modern democracy, or that it is, although flawed, a genius way of organizing the government to best protect the fundamental freedoms of Americans against the threat of future tyranny. But I prefer to see it as a pact between the 'government' of the United States of America (the concept, not the people), and the people of the United States of America. It is the government promising democracy, and the protection of fundamental rights: and it is the people promising to protect the government: to buy into the concept of American Democracy, and actively participate in it. It is the promise, by the government, to protect our rights as long as we, the people, want them: so long as we, like good citizens do, fight to protect the core values of our country.

By the time I'd caught on to the frenzy, the actors in the TV show were already on the book cover - which, when I bought it for about five dollars at Walmart before going to sleep-away-camp was of a punishing quality only slightly better than your average penny-dreadful. Nevertheless, I read the book three or so times throughout that single week, managed to completely destroy the front cover (I think I dropped it from a bunk bed), and somehow ground enough dirt into the pages that six years later, they still feel slightly gritty. It would be another year or so until I watched the television show which by that point had garnered considerable acclaim. My parents, who'd never read the book, loved it. I, to my considerable surprise, also loved it. The review on the back cover of my copy of the book calls it "A funny book about the end of the world". I prefer to think of it as a meandering attempt at plot with entirely too much British humor and somehow just enough of that patent British charm to sell in America (and overall, make quite an entertaining story). In case it hasn't become clear by now, I'm talking about Good Omens. Now - my disclaimer (technically, you're supposed to put these at the top, but that would have really ruined the pacing): I do in no way shape or form endorse the actions of Neil Gaiman (I don't follow the news, so I'm not even really sure what he did... I just know it's bad). Also, I only watched season one (which I think is entirely understandable, given that's the only season that actually follows the plot of the book). Now why is it the best? I suppose part of it rests in sentimentality - I love the book, so of course I love the show, the same way I love watching Harry Potter (although I wholly disapprove of several aspects of that adaptation). Another factor is probably a brilliant choice of actors (I, for one, will watch anything with David Tennant in it). Also, the plot of the book is undeniably brilliant - and even a film studio would have quite a bit of difficulty losing the plot when it's already been written down (I'm not saying it's not possible: looking at you Artemis Fowl). But all that makes a good film. Not a good film adaptation. The reason I like the Good Omens TV show so much is that it takes all the best bits of Good Omens - the dry humor, the irrelevant narrator, the slightly meandering plot, and preserves them while adding the sort of flair that can only come with a really good film (soundtrack, dramatic pauses, and wonderfully illustrative character and set design). it makes for a brilliant show, but it also makes for a brilliant adaptation - pulling all the essence of Good Omens out of the book, and illustrating it - giving the readers a good, clear picture, of what's happening within the novel. We call it movie magic - but there really is something special about seeing something you've (Literally) only read about blazing across a TV screen. That's why, despite numerous bad experiences, I give film adaptations chances again and again - and it works out occasionally - like Good Omens, which isn't just the best book adaptation I've ever seen - it's also one of my favorite TV shows.