High school essay winners write from the heart

Just behind my dad’s left ear, the faint blue LED light from the oven clock reads 12:06 a.m., reminding me that I’ve been talking for four hours and 18 minutes. 

Somehow it doesn’t feel long enough. 

My tired body forces my arms to push off the counter. As I slide down, I realize that this granite surface has never been just about food; it’s been the foundation for growth, connection and preparation for life. 

These late-night conversations follow the same rhythm each time. I step into the kitchen, where my dad and stepmom wait at their usual stools at the raised counter. One question is all it takes before I’m sitting crisscross applesauce 10 feet away from them. The normal talk of college comes up, and we finally enter the question of the future. 

Soon, I’m asking the same questions I can never seem to answer: Am I ready to leave? What if my future doesn’t match the plan? Am I enough for the future I imagine? 

But then, I remember, just like counters, life is built in layers: Messy, imperfect, yet strong enough to hold me up. 

The kitchen counter has always been there to provide stability when everything around me was changing. Whether at my childhood home, where I watched my mom leave for what would soon be considered “Mom’s house,” my dad’s new house, where I said goodbye the first time my brother left for college, or my mom’s new kitchen, where my dog left a scratch the last time he snuck on the counter for a bite of our dinner. 

No matter what it has been through, the counter remains, holding the weight of my oatmeal and my silence the next morning. 

At the counter, my dad teaches me the value of ambition. 

At the counter, my stepmom pushes me to pursue passion over fear. 

At the counter, my mom helps me untangle broken relationships.

Each conversation rests on the same foundation: A cool, solid surface that holds not just plates, but pieces of our lives. 

It’s not just food that’s prepared on the counter, but me. I climbed onto it as a child to reach the impossible, and I’ve sat on it as a teenager when the weight of the decisions felt too heavy. 

Growth doesn’t happen at once: It happens in the everyday moments, when life feels overwhelming, spills over and gets wiped up – even if it leaves a stain. Each counter, old or new, carries a piece of me in every nook of its surface. 

I believe sometimes it only takes climbing on the counter to look out and see how far I have come.

I remember one night six years ago, my brother, Davion, went to take a shower. When he went into the bathroom, he had long dreadlocks extending past his shoulders. Davion started his loc journey to be more like his dad and, at this point, he’d had locs for five years. 

An hour later, he walked out of the bathroom, his locs gone. 

When I saw him, I noticed all of his uneven cuts. Years of patience down the drain, but why? He told us that he felt like when people see him, they only see his hair. If he didn’t have a retwist, he was seen as unkempt and dirty. With his hair down, he was seen as a gangster and a thug. 

I was too young to realize: This is what being Black in America is.

Four years later, I’ve started my own loc journey to have hair like my brother’s, and I’ve started to see his point. Whenever there’s some important event, I’m expected to have my hair done because it “looks neater.” When people say this, it shows that they don’t know my culture – and they aren’t trying to know it either. Locs are supposed to grow out, they aren’t supposed to be kept done. It creates hair thinning. 

So I wonder if when people see me, are they only seeing an unkempt Black girl?

One night, on my way home from my job, I got pulled over. I was scared because I was all alone on a side street, still in my hospital scrubs. I know I hadn’t broken any laws, so why was I pulled over? The white female officer told me I was pulled over that night because when I turned, I looked suspicious – simply because of my skin and appearance. 

Am I suspicious walking into my Advanced Placement classes? How about when I walk across the stage to get recognition for all of my hard work in school? It’s hard to fathom that my hair and skin color can shrink me as a person and all of my accomplishments. 

My brother is studying in college to be an anesthesiologist and also serving our country. He’s still the same person that was looked at like a thug because of his hair.  

I believe that people are more than what you see. At school, I’m the highest-achieving person of color, ranked in the top five of my class. I also have high aspirations to be a surgeon. One of my favorite things to do is join random clubs or sports. I do this because I want to pad my resume, but also because I don’t want to be predictable. By that I mean when people see a Black girl with dreadlocks, they don’t see a softball or golf player, they see basketball or track. Not to say there’s anything wrong with those sports, I just don’t play them. 

I believe that in order to truly get to know someone, questions need to be asked.

It tends to downpour a lot in this life I am living. 

Sometimes, I feel like it is always raining in my world while everyone else is stuck on a sunny day. I have noticed that I always find myself being able to dance in the rain, though. It does not matter how hard it poured, how cloudy the sky was, or if it was 40 degrees out – I would still be dancing. 

There are these different storms that pass through my life. Some are calm, while others are a hurricane. Whether it is a simple sprinkle of rain or a complete flood, I always try to find the clear sky in life. 

I remember this one storm that went on for what felt like a decade. At first, the flowers were blooming and the grass was green – but eventually I began smelling the familiar tar scent before it would rain. As the clouds became darker, like my mind, I started to become mentally and physically exhausted. 

Right when I thought the drops were getting lighter, it began raining harder than ever before. The rain kept pouring, the wind picked up and soon thunder and lightning started. It was so loud, I could not hear anything but the storm. 

This went on for months – and still, every day, I would continue to get up and dance. 

After a year of swirling, I finally decided I was done. I wanted the mushy grass to go away, and I could not take the sounds of the tree branches banging against my window anymore, like the thoughts that consume my head, begging to break out. I thought the only way to make the sounds stop was to end my dancing. 

As soon as I was about to stop moving my body and swinging my hips, I spotted a rainbow in the corner of my eye. The colors were so dim I could barely even tell what it was. It was the first time I saw something other than black and white. I was relieved when I saw the lightest shade of red, and the pale orange that reminded me of a sunset. The fair shade of yellow looked like a sunflower. The tiniest bit of green that instantly reminded me of my best friend. A very dim, but bright blue, when I saw my sister’s eyes. Finally, the two extremely faded purples reminiscent of my favorite flower. 

The rainbow, with the weak bit of color, reminded me of the moments I loved and helped me through the storm, which soon cleared up. 

When the rainbow hit my eyes, I realized that there is so much more to live for. I understood why I danced: Seeing the people I love smile, my dad surprising me with flowers, my best friend making me laugh until I could not breathe. 

I believe that the tiniest moments are what made the rain clouds clear up. Mental health is a recurring storm, and I am strong enough to live and thrive through the challenges life blows my way.

Throughout my time in school, I have heard a phrase along the lines of: “Get it done now so you don’t have to do it later.”

While that statement does hold some appeal to it, it’s not always achievable. In some way or another, everyone lives under this flawed expectation to work hard and earn rest, but it isn’t healthy. I spent many years as a kid blindly obeying this philosophy in fear of falling behind, but ultimately, it cost me more progress than it gave me. 

I’ve always enjoyed a challenge, so I took whatever high-level course I could for freshman year. I approached my homework the same way I always had: Getting it done quickly and letting it leave my mind completely until the next day. That strategy got me by in middle school, but it did not prepare me for the intense workload that high school brought me. 

I felt the exhaustion taking over. Every night I was completely depleted and would remain in my room for hours to power through my work – nothing that coffee couldn’t fix, right? As I tried to tackle everything to “get it done now” over the months, my anxiety increasingly ramped up, and some days it felt like the world was falling apart.

By the middle of sophomore year, I gave laying down and doing nothing after school a shot; whether it was intentional or due to pure burnout, I don’t remember. I soon realized how much I needed that. Over time, I learned to plan how to distribute my work into manageable pieces. I finally had the energy to go out and hold conversations and just exist without fear of what could happen if I dared not do four hours of homework in one sitting. I used to feel so stuck in my routine, but now I’m actually growing from it.

I learned that immediately laying on the couch with a bag of chips and “Stranger Things” queued up after school is OK. Going out with friends before studying is OK. Regardless of whether or not you’re a student, there isn’t shame in taking a break – no matter how much the work is practically calling to you from the desk. I hope for a normalization of being lazy sometimes – or as I call it, “couch potato-ization” – for exhausted American youth. 

I believe in taking breaks, but more importantly, I believe in spending time intentionally – whether it is generally considered productive or not – which includes time for nothing at all. 

In my opinion, the best work is done with the best-prepared mind, and rest is absolutely essential to having that. I’ve learned as I approach adulthood that the truly adult thing to do is not tackle a task all at once, but instead, approach it with a game plan. So, I’m glad I’ve binged “The Office” and “Friends” to the point where I can quote them. It’s made me a better student.

When I ask my parents what I was like as a baby, they always provide the same answer: “You were a happy baby, just a little ray of sunshine.” 

When I look at my mom’s social media accounts, I see the same thing. My entire life, from the moment I was placed in my mother’s arms, is meticulously documented for the whole world to see. And there I was: A smiling, happy baby girl.

Then, in February of 2023, I went to a psych ward in Indiana. I was at the lowest point of my life. I was killing myself over perfectionism, and I was sent to this hospital to heal the wounds I inflicted upon myself. 

Unfortunately, I did not heal. But I learned.

In this mental hospital, we were explicitly told by our caregivers that we were in this place to be punished for our actions. I felt so, so helpless … that I listened. I conformed and I silently accepted the punishment they made me believe I deserved.

Though even when I was at the lowest point in my life, where my sky was overcast and there was no sun to be seen, there was still something flickering left inside me. The counselors were not helping us heal, and I learned quickly that they weren’t going to. 

So, with the only piece of my heart I had left, I gave it to the 21 other teenagers I was with. I was among drug addicts, alcoholics, genuinely violent people – but I broke the rules and I gave them hugs anyway. When the counselors disciplined me and demanded that I stop, I didn’t. 

These “juvenile delinquents” I was among, the drug addicts, alcoholics and violent people? They never once said anything to hurt me or others while I was there. Why? They were being loved. They were being hugged, and they were being told that they mattered. 

One day, one of my peers approached me and said, “Cora, you’re like a ray of sunshine here. Thank you.” 

Hence, I believe in sunshine. No matter what you do or where you go, there will always be sunshine. None of us – even the drug addicts, alcoholics and everyone in between – are born inherently evil. We’re all people, and we deserve love. We deserve sunshine in our lives. 

If you’re ever lost on an overcast day, just look for someone – something, anything – that can help brighten up your day. Sunshine is in no shortage: All you must do is look for it.

I believe in giving hongbao, the small red envelopes filled with money and decorated with gold images that my relatives give to me. 

Their red color symbolizes good luck and prosperity. The tradition began when a group of elders awarded a young man with a red envelope full of coins as a thank you for slaying a demon. 

While hongbao is typically given during holidays and celebrations, my relatives often give them to me after we have been apart for a long time. The reasoning behind this irregular occurrence is that it may be many years before we meet again. 

When my grandmother and her family left Communist China, they scrambled to survive once they landed in the United States. With the little money they had, they scattered across the U.S. to rebuild their lives. As a result, I have never met a majority of my extended family. Every few years a new great-aunt or uncle will appear with a hongbao, a gesture that seeks to make up the lost time with money. 

The first time I received an envelope, I was extremely delighted, unaware of what the gift actually meant. I saw the envelopes as mere cash holders. However, as I have grown older, these envelopes have developed into a symbol of my family’s love. They show the perseverance of our connection, despite being separated by thousands of miles. Each time I receive a hongbao, I am reminded that the grit and resolve I possess were handed down to me by people who rebuilt their lives in a nation 8,000 miles away from home. 

Receiving a hongbao was never about just getting some extra pocket money, it was a testimony to the fact that our separation had not dulled our love for each other. In a culture where showing emotions can sometimes be considered taboo, the offering of a hongbao is the ultimate display of tenderness and intimacy.

I believe in giving hongbao to family members whenever I see them. Giving hongbao is a way to acknowledge the sacrifices of my ancestors while keeping the bonds with my living family strong.

I believe in the freedom of expression that art provides. 

I grew up believing that art was constricted. Confined to the world of masterpieces, each finished piece better than the last. Improvement, perfection and dedication. Ways to become great – but not to express. 

Making art had become a chore to create and complete. Looking back at my old sketchbooks now, I wonder how I turned something meant for the unfinished pieces into a gallery of “perfect” work.

It was probably around middle school when art seemed to open up. The world of media introduced me to the sketches, messy lines and mixed media that weren’t controlled by the rules of perfection. I started to incorporate this idea into my own sketches, and things didn’t need to be completed. Making art just to learn was the first step: Practicing poses in art class, learning to leave things unfinished because it didn’t have to be. Imperfections are what helped me learn, sketches more useful than any completed piece I made. 

Still, I needed perfection. 

It wasn’t until I started mixed media art that I truly felt that freedom. I continued to look online. I saw art without reason, no rules or restrictions. Anything could go on those pages and that idea confused me. How would someone even know if that art was good enough? Could it even be called art? And why did it look so fun? 

I struggled with these thoughts for a while. I didn’t want to let go of the standard I set for myself, the unspoken rules that I didn’t want to break. However, curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to try out this messy art style.

It started easily: Messy sketches that I meticulously put separated from one another, but still on the same page. Better, but not quite right. 

Then I began to experiment. I thought about the emotions I put into each piece. How was I feeling? I saw so many others draw their emotions in a way that just felt right: No plan, no goal, just however the pencil moved. 

So I tried it out. It had been a hard day, so I just stopped thinking and let the pencil move. That day I cried over my art for the first time. After that, adding more of the unconventional aspects became easier – and it became fun. 

Art started to feel like an extension of me. It was my way of self-expression. Gaining that freedom in art helped me express myself better in my daily life. It created new pathways that I never had before. I love art and will always believe in the way that expression has changed who I am. 

I will continue to create art that is messy, fun and full of life because it puts a little bit of who I am into each piece – and that in and of itself is what makes it my art.

As a little girl, Christmas was my favorite holiday. There was nothing quite as special as waking up early to presents and hot cocoa. 

I would wake up at the crack of dawn and rush into my parents’ room, barely pausing to look at the snow-covered lawn outside. My mother would shush me and quickly usher me downstairs so I didn’t wake my father. Soon, everyone in my house would be gathered downstairs in front of the tree, ready to open presents. To a kid, this day was a type of magic like no other. 

Soon, the years passed, and I wasn’t a kid anymore. Santa and his reindeer had left my mind, replaced by a new type of magic: Books! Every day after school, I begged my grandmother to take me to the library so I could find a new obsession for the week. Harry Potter, Percy Jackson … it was far too easy to be consumed by these worlds, places where magic and the mundane coexisted. Between the pages of these books, people could heal any injury, fly without a plane and move things with their minds. How could our world compare? 

I lived with this mindset for years, but one day, something changed. I was working at a summer camp when one of my friends mentioned that he attended a boarding school. He took the train there every year. How cool! To me, trains were special, reserved only for the best trips, but he said something that shocked me. He thought trains were boring. He had taken that trip so many times that he had lost his sense of wonder. It made me stop and ask myself: How much magic had normality drained from my life?

I pondered this question as I exited the air-conditioned building and got into my car. As I sat there thinking, the answer was all around me. 

Looking around my room, I now see the world with new eyes. I look at my phone that allows me to talk to anyone at a moment’s notice, and I think about how amazing this little piece of metal is. I think of my car and how it can travel faster than anyone imagined. I even think of my microwave that gives me hot food within seconds. 

These things may seem small now, but none of these existed 200 years ago. The world is constant in its advancement forward. We might not be able to fly like a bird, or leap back in time, but what we have isn’t insignificant. 

Look around yourself and think of phones and cars and life. Don’t let routine suck the magic out of your day. 

I believe that our world is filled with things beyond our imagination – you just have to be willing to see them.

Throughout middle school and elementary school, I was the biggest baseball fan. Anytime the Cardinals had a game, I had to watch it. I would even fake sick to watch the day games.

Every time I missed school, my Papa would come and watch me. We were both big baseball fans, so it worked out in everybody’s favor. He always showed up to watch the games with me, even if that meant having to stop a day’s work.

One thing about my Papa is that he never stopped working, even when it caught up to him. I was around 10 when he was put in the hospital for a hernia. He had been working in the fields for days straight and fell sick. When my family and I went to see him, I remember being disgruntled. The Cardinals were playing, and I was missing it. I remember being short with him and rushing to get out of there.

That was the last time I would ever see my Papa.

He passed away due to surgery complications. At his funeral, the line stretched on for hours, and hundreds of people showed up to express their condolences.

As I grieved, I couldn’t help but think about his last impression of me. People always talk about how first impressions matter a lot, but I’d argue that last impressions matter more. 

My Papa always showed up for me, even when it meant sacrificing something he loved doing. And the last time I saw him, I was ungrateful and rude.

Years later, I look back on this moment as a turning point in my life. I vowed from that day on that I never wanted to leave a negative last impression. Life is valuable and short. It is not meant to be wasted. I believe in the power of last impressions; the idea of leaving a lasting positive impact on someone is important to me.

Ultimately, my belief in the power of last impressions stems from my desire to live a life of purpose and meaning. By choosing to leave a positive mark on others, I’ll never again have to experience what happened to the person who left a positive mark on me.

On a beautiful, mid-August Sunday evening, my two sisters and I are covered in shopping bags and Auntie Annie’s pretzel crumbs. Nearly about to burst from being so full, I put on “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction. 

Cautiously, my mom turns down the music in the middle of my older sister, Lily, screaming, “Baby, you light up my world like nobody else.” 

However, instead of my mom smiling because her children are finally getting along, her expression seemed more serious. 

“Your dad and I are getting a divorce.” 

Those are words that no 10-year-old ever wants to hear. In this moment, it felt like I was trapped behind glass. My life was over. 

Over the next six months, my sibling and I had to adjust to our “new” life. Life with divorced parents looked similar to having recurring sleepovers with your best friend. I would fill my pink Shopkins drawstring bag with an unnecessary amount of clothes, my white stuffed rabbit and a photograph of my family at Little Rock Lake, the only reminder of what my life used to look like. At my mom’s house, the days consisted of an abundant amount of laughter and going on different adventures, while at my dad’s, weekends were filled with Penn State football and playing catch. 

However, my biggest adjustment didn’t come from two houses or a Shopkins bag. It came from the sympathy of others. 

At first, I hated telling people that my parents were divorced. Embarrassment would flood me whenever friends would say, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” or “Am I taking you to your mom’s or dad’s house?” Their pity made me feel different, like my family was broken in a way that no one else could understand. 

But over time, I realized that having divorced parents didn’t mean I was less loved or less fortunate than other kids. It simply meant my love came from two different households. 

At my eighth-grade basketball night, I looked into the stands while being recognized and saw both of my parents smiling proudly at me. It didn’t matter if they were sitting on opposite sides of the gym. In that moment, something changed the way I viewed my family. I didn’t need one home to feel whole, because all the love and support I needed was right in front of me the entire time. 

Divorce hadn’t taken love away; it had simply placed it in two different places. 

Now, older and wiser, I am grateful for my parents. They have taught me that even in difficult times, love is still there. They have shown me that just because you are different, it doesn’t mean you are less. Now, when people express their sorrows for me, I laugh and ask why. Because, after all, I believe in two homes.