4'11 Forever: College Admission Essay Sample

When my mom gave birth to me, I weighed in at nine and a half pounds and measured twenty-two inches. One could say I was pretty big for a newborn, but whenever I tell this story, it is soon followed by a: “And that’s pretty much when I stopped growing.” Ever since I can remember, and up until the eleventh grade, I had always been the shortest guy in my class. The problem with this, coupled with the fact that I’m a guy, is that people usually only respect people who look “scary,” i.e., tall and big people. And I mean, who was I going to scare at 4’11?.

Ever since I started school I have had to compensate for my height to get people not to take advantage of me. For example, when I arrived in my current school, I decided to try out for the tennis team, which had just won the championship the year before. When I went to the try-outs, the other kids from my class taunted me because they thought that my height made me weak and a bad player. However, they were very wrong; I made the team and we won the championship that year. This is the compensation I am talking about, and it is the reason why I believe I am who I am today.

I entered my current high school in the seventh grade. I was a small kid and knew about 10 kids from my class, which is a small amount considering we were 150 back then. However, even though I knew no one, I ran for class president that same year. Thanks to my personality and some campaigning from my 10 friends, my class elected me president. That was the day I realized that it didn’t matter how tall I was as long as I proved I deserved respect. From that day forward, my “struggle” (because we teenagers exaggerate everything) with height has given me the character and dignity with which I portray myself every day.

I still find it ironic, however, that everyone from my class, even the ones that I’ve physically outgrown, still call me “enano,” which is Spanish for midget. At first, I didn’t understand. I mean, I knew I wasn’t that tall but I was now average, so why were they still taunting me? It was some time later that I realized that they weren’t taunting me; they just remember me as the short guy who didn’t care that he was short when he arrived in school. Now that I am taller, I think to myself: why should I care now? So I embrace the irony and laugh at it, and at the end of the day, the fact that you can laugh at yourself is a great indication of self-confidence, which is what we teenagers strive for during our time in school.