My College Essay

Remember how people rip these off. YOU BETTER NOT.

Personal Statement
In seventh grade, I decided it was time to start a diary. Like any other tween, I had the intention of keeping it hidden in my room and pouring out my heart’s desires in it every night. So of course within a week of its inception, I brought it to school.
“What’s that?” my friend asked.
“Nothing,” I quickly replied, hugging the composition notebook to my chest. But for some reason, I realized that there was absolutely nothing I had written that I considered embarrassing. So I gave her the notebook.
What she found was a compilation of stickers, cartoons, and quotes that I found interesting or funny. “This is amazing!” she said. I was proud of myself; I had entertained someone for maybe five minutes, but it had made my day.
Word spread about my so-called diary, and soon I had friends approaching me and asking to read it. Before I knew it, the situation spiraled. The diary became “The Book.” It made its daily rounds to my closest friends and anyone who cared to read it.
There have been a total of five books since then, each one in a different colored composition notebook. In them, my friends and I made ourselves superheroes, created sticker collages, ranted politically, glued in the headlines of the day, drew our own cartoons, took polls, and compiled lists of our favorite things. The Book became a social staple. If anything happened at St. Michael School or around the world worth noting, it went in The Book, with an interpretation from a thirteen year old girl. I still wonder what Jon Stewart would say if he knew that I wanted him to be Press Secretary for the country I created.
It is intriguing to think of how little I have changed. I still have a dry sense of humor and still observe the most obscure things. My entry for the Easter of 2005 began: “Easter. Remembrance of our Lord being brutally murdered by capital punishment, now symbolized by a happy little bunny bouncing around distributing chocolates.” That entry led to the AEBA, The Anti-Easter Bunny Alliance. Always the environmentalist, I encouraged potential readers to “go hug a tree.” I also expressed my anger over someone stealing our John Kerry yard sign the same way I expressed it when our Obama yard sign disappeared. After Kerry’s loss in 2004, I wrote, “I found an article in USA Weekend about the 2008 election. Let’s go Hillary!” Four years later, I still supported her.
At the same time, I feel as if I have matured immensely. I don’t really spend time making vendettas against helpless holiday characters anymore. I’ve learned to take my political energy and channel it into useful activities such as registering voters, canvassing, and making phone calls, rather than purely ranting about what should be done. It is also reassuring that I broke my healthy addiction to Spongebob Squarepants by ninth grade.
The Book has greatly influenced who I am today. Had it been a traditional diary, I never would have gotten much of my friends’ input. It taught me to value other people’s opinions. Of course, it was annoying when people would write “Go Bush” everywhere, but in retrospect I can see that a one-sided story is a little boring. The Book made me realize that I love to write. The thrill of being the news source was exhilarating. It formed my goal to relay political information to the American people one day. It taught me to be who I am and to not be afraid of what others may think, say, or write about me.
I am still the same Isabel Custodio that I was in eighth grade. I am just refined, more mature, deeper. I am still the girl who enjoys going to political rallies more than birthday parties, who likes a good caveman comic every now and then, and who pastes pictures of her cats everywhere. The Book began the foundation of my adult being. We’ll just have to wait for Volume Six to see where I go from here.