Draft 2 Experience

To Whom it may Concern,

This is not a story about one person in particular. Rather its about an experience as a
whole as I lived it. I thank those who were involved in shaping my thinking and personality.
Without these persons I wouldn't have become who I am today, and I thank you all for your
enlightenment.

To begin we go back, back to a more dramatic and traverse period for everyone, the end of
middle school and the beginning of high school. Where everyone was searching for a place to be,
and a crowd to call their own, and I was no different. I remember going out and buying all new
clothes, mostly black because I thought "hey, the goth kids dont take shit from anybody." Turns
out they did. They took the blunt of most of the cruel and unusual jokes circulating around
campus. No one dared make fun of me to my face, but I was not deaf, I could hear the laughter
echoing through the halls directed at me and my ilk. I didn't care, I was who I was, and I wasn't
ashamed. I had joined baseball in the fall only to meet the next clique the school had to offer, the
Jocks. I never truely fit in with the baseball kids and because they were the people who had
laughed and made fun of me the entire year I didn't much like them either. Mainly because of
their horrible superego, but also for their lack of work ethic. I nearly killed myself the entire
year getting into shape for the season, and what hurt the most is that they, without doing much
work and constantly complaining about doing the workouts, played more games than I did. The
coaches always had meetings to always tell us how much we complain and how much we need to
work harder. I say we because even though the team consisted of seperate individuals playing baseball, I was still apart of it. The next year was a repeat of the year before. A year older, and not too much brighter. It wasn't until the summer in between sophomore and junior year that things finally began to change.

A friend of mine had convinced me to come out to the cross-country summer conditioning to
see if I would like it. I was very skeptical about it. Running long distance was not my forte, but I
was fast in the sprints. The first day I was astonished to find at how easy the runners had
accepted me and how easy going they were. I immeditally fit in. What diffred from baseball is
that this WAS a team. Cross-country was one well oiled machine consisting of friends as close as
brothers. I fell in love with running because of the sheer excitement from being with the team. I
ended up running track in the fall instead of playing baseball, and I have never looked back.
After track I contuined to run cross-country through my senior year, and because the same
kids played Ultimate Frisbee, I played with them. I had finally found the group of people where i
could be happy. Being on that team had changed me in such a profound way I can hardly
describe the drastic switch. Since freshman year I have learned much, but most imporantly I
learned how not to behave. I learned not to judge people for who they are, but for what they do.

Because of this I have learned to have a higher outlook in the good in people, Even those who the
rest of society have cast aside. High school in its whole was very educational, but my education
did not come from the classroom, but from studying those around me.