I was addicted to Knight Online in my freshman (9th) grade year. I remember playing it for hours on end, sometimes even to log on and just sit around and do nothing. I'd probably walk around at school thinking about nothing but Knight Online, and what I could do to get better at the game. It consumed me.
As a result, I failed my Freshman year. I recieved 3 B's in my classes and as a result I was behind on coursework from then on. I never understood why I even played Knight Online, but maybe it was some involuntary thought that I had to be better, but this was always at a cost - the cost of my grades. I tried to make up for my 3.5 GPA in my Freshman year, by essentially doing every extracurricular activity there was, involving my passions with my non-academic pursuits. I literally taught a computer science "course" at my school (since there were no classes related to programming at my school), worked as a technical director for theatre productions, became extremely active in our debate program, practiced endless hours of piano to win at competitions, played on the high school tennis team, started my own web designing organization, moderated you fools, and underwent an internship at the Boeing company, all to pursue my penchant for both innovation and engineering. Although my grades were bad in Freshman year, I consistently brought them up each year, up to a 4.0 in my Senior year first quarter report. I scored a 2260 on the SATs. But it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough.
For some reason, this year, I was the only person applying to Stanford (early). In addition, I had one sibling who had already attended Stanford. I had so much going for me. But you can't make up for lost time. To err is to infinitely drown yourself in the hands of failure.
Yesterday, I recieved my rejection letter from Stanford University, and for that reason I now realize my mistakes. There is no way to amend, you need to take every moment and do well. Stop playing video games, or at least control yourself to perhaps 2 hours per week. You won't gain anything by being good at this game. You won't gain anything by becoming the #1 forum troll on ko4life. You will only lose.
Time is forever fleeting,
you cannot catch it.
Oh, do not waste time weeping,
for you will waste your wit.
I'll be unreachable by MSN, this forum, and on any game until next April. Bye.Dear Allen,
The Office of Undergraduate Admission regrets to inform you that we are unable to offer you admission to Stanford University. The overall quality of our applicant pool and relatively small size of our freshman class means that we disappoint the vast majority of our applicants each year. We acknowledge your strong interest in Stanford, which makes the task of sending you this news especially difficult.[/b]
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