Quote: “There are no failures - just experiences and your reactions to them.”
- Tom Krause

Failure. According to the general rules of society, this word accurately describes me. I graduated high school with a low GPA, and have yet to attend a 4 year college. This causes people to come to one of two conclusions, either I am not intelligent, or I have no ambition/motivation.

Disappointment. This is a word that my peers, and loved ones may use to describe me. They always tell me I am not stupid, or that I am very intelligent, and I should just try harder to do well in school. This eliminates option one, because clearly the general consensus of those who know me is that I am intelligent. Therefore, I must be unmotivated and lacking ambition.

Naive. This is a word that, at this point in my life, I would use to describe myself. I am extremely ambitious, more ambitious than I should be. My dream is to be an entrepreneur, specifically a web-guru. I have actually earned a few thousand dollars from websites that I coded and designed myself. Now, one may wonder why this affects my grades in school, or why I have yet to attend a 4 year college.

Divergent Thinking and Creativity. Now, divergent thinking and creativity are not the same thing, but divergent thinking is an essential component for creativity. In order to be a successful entrepreneur you must be creative. In order to be creative you must be good at divergent thinking. There was a study on divergent thinking in a book called “Breakpoint and Beyond” which tested children from grades K-12, giving them a test every five years. As time went on, their capacity for creativity and divergent thinking deteriorated. According to Ken Robinson, a world-renowned creativity and education expert, this decline in creativity was caused by the children becoming more educated. We are taught that there is one answer to a problem, and it is at the back of the book.

Dreams. We all have dreams, hopes, goals, expectations. I have heard a saying that college is where we let our dreams die. I would have to say that, generally speaking, this is true. We give up our desires, our dreams, because society tells us they are “unreasonable” or “unrealistic.” It is these hopes and expectations that cause us to have regrets because we settled for less. I do not want to live a life thinking “what if” and I do not want any regrets. However, as naive as I may be, I am not naive enough to believe that never going to college is a good idea.

College. Upon graduating high school, I had no interest in college. In fact, I did apply to a single college. My parents made it a fact that if I was not going to college I was not living in their houses. So, I enrolled in community college, high school v2.0.

Coasting. Things at this point in my life were good. I was dating my high school girlfriend, I was turning my dream of becoming a web-guru into a reality by setting up various websites, and I was living for free with my parents. I coasted through life for a year like this, managing mediocre grades at school, and making some extra pocket money from my websites.

Lucky Day. Now, I had been in the web marketing business for a little over a year at this point. I had been teaching myself the ins and outs of the business, and I was making a few hundred dollars a month, more than enough for food, gas, and anything extra that I wanted. Like I said, things were good, but they got a lot better. One morning I logged into my advertising account to find that I had already earned one hundred dollars for the day. One of my websites had gone viral, and I had hit the big leagues.

Waking Up. My dream had come true, I was earning a six figure salary doing nothing. My hard work had paid off, and now I could relax and enjoy life for a while. Well two months went by like this, and life was good until I received an DMCA notice. “Notice of Zynga Game Network Inc. Trademark Infringement zyngasecrets.net” They claimed that my domain was infringing on their copyrighted term “Zynga” and that I take down the website and cease use of the domain immediately. It gave me a scare, so I did as asked, and immediately took down the site. My earnings went down, and I returned back to making pocket money. At this point I had withdrawn from all my classes, and it was too late to enroll for the next semester.

NEET. Being a ‘NEET’ or in other words ‘Not in Education, Employment, or Training’ was not all that I expected it to be. I immediately began a job search. I got hired at Staples as an EasyTech and spent most of my time selling and/or fixing computers. It fit my skill-set, so the job was not difficult for me, however I was miserable there. I worked full-time throughout the summer, and tried to continue working full-time through this most recent semester of school.

Overloaded. Working full time and attending school full time was not the smartest idea. I was doing well in my classes at first, but slowly work and school began to overlap. One of the other technicians had recently quit to return to schooling, and work started scheduling me during class time. I was ahead in all my classes, so I ended up missing two or three in order to keep my job since getting fired would look horrible on any resume. I explained to my employer that I needed less hours to focus on school. I was beginning to fall behind so I quit my job in an effort to recover my grades, but two of my professors had already dropped me from the class for having unexcused absences.

Currently. As of right now I am still in the online marketing business and making enough money for a college student to live on. I am applying to college in hope that I can put my life on a better track. I do not want to be labeled a failure, and I do not want to be a disappointment. I do not want to regret giving up on my dreams, but I have come to the realisation that putting my dreams on hold does not mean I am giving them up. College is a necessary component for one to become successful in society today. So here I am, writing this essay, in hope that I can get accepted to a faraway place where I can initiate a paradigm shift. I wish to drastically change my behavior for the better, and to better myself. I truly believe that Pittsburgh is a place that I can do that. I have had many experiences in my life, and I have reacted poorly to them. I cannot control life, but I can control how I react to it. Now I am changing my reaction, and trying to change the paradigm of my life.