Any student enrolled in English 101P, 101, 102, or 112 during Spring 2023 through Spring 2024 may submit an essay of any kind on any topic. There are no length limits for this category. Brooklyn Collins wrote the 2nd place submission in the First-Year Writing category for the 2024 President’s Writing Awards.
About Brooklyn
Hey! My name is Brooklyn Collins and I am currently a senior at Mountain Home High School. I wrote this essay for class and even though the essay itself was not last minute, I did speak on my experiences with procrastination and the key memories in my life where it has led me.
Winning Manuscript – Last Minute Title
I. Acting Before Thinking
“Did you eat before we left? Drink water?” My mom said she already knew the answer but was still asking because that was her job.
“I forgot too…do you have snacks in your bag?” I retorted.
“Not for you, you’ll have to wait until after this to grab a bite,” my mom said as she was visibly annoyed at my lack of breakfast, pursing her lips.
“Why would you not eat before we left the house, ugh, we are already here now.”
“Mom…” “What?”
“I love you,” I chuckled nervously as I stopped myself from saying something I shouldn’t.
II. Into the Lion’s Cave, I Go
I have not faced many fears in my lifetime, as I lived a nice and comfortable life. But put me in a room with a pack of hungry lions or an assignment that’s late; better hand me a sword because I would fight the lions to death because that would be much as scary. I fear being ill- prepared for a project or going to class without my homework from the night before. I don’t like that feeling of being out of control within my own life mixed with the humiliation of telling my teacher, “No, I don’t have it done.” I am averse to turning in my assignments late. However, quite the irony, I have the habit of procrastinating. With what seems like water and fire, I have had experiences in which I struggled to do the best I could or had the potential to on assignments leading to a slump in my growth in learning and other areas in my life. While it is not an issue of laziness, I have grown to realize that I lack the maturity to focus on one task for a long time. As a kid, I daydreamed about heroic adventures or romantic conquests during a test or lecture and once I realized I was supposed to be focusing, it was too late to catch up.
III. From the Doctor’s Office to the Bathroom
I struggle to remember to eat my three meals a day which has left me with many instances of uncomfortable situations in which I should have learned my lesson but never did. I was 13, sitting there in the doctor’s office, on the hard cold table with my legs dangling over the edge. I wasn’t scared but nervous as my mom was talking to me about her day before the doctor walked in. She was talking about how school went but soon after my hearing blurred because I wasn’t focused on her words, but on when the doctor was going to come in. Two people walked in, a young man and an older lady.
I went to the hospital to have my blood drawn, for the first time, and I felt nauseous. It didn’t make the situation any better that I had forgotten to eat breakfast that day. They prepared the needles in the room and pulled out the seemingly long knife-like needle. They cleaned my arm off and told me to breathe; however, the words lost their way to my ear as my sight started to spin. I felt the initial jab as the needle plunged into me, and I felt it wiggle around. Bile was coming up from my throat, and I could taste it rising despite my efforts to hold it together. They pulled out the needle saying something about not being able to find the vein and they tried again sticking it into my flesh, this time I couldn’t hold my liquids in. I threw up through and up my mask and onto the coat of the male nurse. I ran to the bathroom, my cheeks all red from the embarrassment of what happened. I sat in the restroom for eternity, wondering if going back was worth the shame I’d just caused. I trudged back into the war zone with the doctors giving me a pitiful look, knowing what just happened. I plopped myself back onto the chair with my mom still giggling on the side, the nurses bandaged me up, helped me clean myself off, and let me go back to the car. I ran to the car bringing shame with me.
I went to tell my brother about it and as we talked with my brother Steven, I learned that I was hypoglycemic at that moment. “Hypoglycemia occurs when the amount of glucose entering the blood through food consumption or release from the liver doesn’t keep pace with the amount entering the cells. Too little food, too much hypoglycemic medication, or increased activity causes the patient’s blood glucose level to drop below normal” (Sammer 49).
Throughout our interview about how the whole event went after the fact, he told me how my lack of eating was, because of forgetfulness, that this whole thing happened. After learning this, I realized that I needed to be more observant with my body and focus more on eating, instead of relying on my family or friends to help me through. Needing to focus on more than one thing at a time.
IV. Lights, Camera, Action… And Cut
I was in the 5th grade at the time, when the only two choices for electives were band and theater, so I took them reluctantly. In my drama class, we had been given our roles for a play I cannot remember the name of, with the whole plot of the story being about these teachers talking about how their students were. I had been given the part of the third teacher and I was excited. I had never been on stage and in front of an audience. Even if this audience was a bunch of tired parents watching their middle school children, I was ecstatic nonetheless. For weeks the class worked on the stage setup and learned our lines and queues for the upcoming show. It was the day of the show, and I was nervous but excited as the lights came on the stage…Act 1.
There I was standing behind the stage waiting my turn to walk on to recite the words I was trying to learn the day of. I wasn’t ready and I couldn’t focus on just memorizing them due to the stresses and commotion around me. My friends so eloquently spoke the lines and knew each cue that was needed, they were prepared unlike me. I could see the parents holding out their cameras to take pictures and I saw my parents waiting for my turn so they could see me and do the same. My peers ended their parts and walked off, my turn was up…Act 2.
I was shaking in fear. Why hadn’t I read these lines out loud the night before, why did I do this to myself when I know what it does to me? I walked on the stage with a fake smile plastered on my face because confidence was vital and if they couldn’t tell that I was panicking, it wasn’t happening. I walked to my place and into position, it was showtime and I had to be ready. My co-actor said her lines and looked at me, waiting for me to say the next bit, but I didn’t. I sat there and just stared into the abyss because I didn’t know my lines or queues. I failed at memorizing what I needed and now I had the consequences of immense shame. We sat there in silence for an abundance of time before my peer made up a closing line and took a bow, walking off stage with me following. I failed and nobody else was at fault…and Cut.
My habits of forgetfulness bleed into my school life as well with assignments constantly filling my brain and all the tasks I have to do. Over the years of my schooling career, I have learned the best thing is to create a list of all that I have to do and when to do it. With these lists, I have learned how to control my inability to focus and stay on track for the longest time.
V. Too Easy to Forget
Many times my lack of preparedness originates from my forgetfulness, but sometimes it is just me and is my fault. My life has been through many situations in which this has been apparent. Throughout it, I have realized my tendencies and why it is so easy not to remember or to forget something. It wasn’t because I didn’t care enough or it was just too much energy to focus enough to remember a specific thing, rather it was due to my nonexistent attention span.
It will be found that we forget much that is convenient to forget by the simple process of not remembering when the opportunity occurs. A mass of recorded circumstance is connected with the record of an event which acts, so to speak, like a handle to reminiscence. We know well that if we think about the event the recorded circumstance will become developed in reminiscence. (Verdon 446)
I have thought many times as to why I don’t remember things as well as others and even with the thorough research I have done, the closest conclusion I can make is that I lack focus and I will always lack the needed attention to detail, which leads into what would I do or how do I learn how to control my focuses because as I have said in my earlier paragraphs I have found ways in which I can hone into my brain, but is there a permanent way to have more focus in general? Verdon talks about in this specific quote, that our short-term memory is, for lack of a better word, the memory that only stays for a “short” while.
VI. Never Not Growing
With my development into learning how to understand myself better, I am still learning how to be a focused human and in doing so I will continue to have these experiences until I do learn. Whether it be with school assignments or plays, or not remembering to eat, I lack preparation in my mind and control. That will be the fate of my life that I have to overcome and time comes and goes by. Reflecting on my time in the doctor’s office makes me think that if I could’ve been more prepared with my time or eating, that could’ve saved me. If I had been more prepared with my lines, maybe I would’ve recited them well. I do not regret the past, but I do wish that sometimes I had worked on my preparedness. Overall, my mind is an ever-growing and changing organism and my preparedness journey is always unfolding as time passes.
Works Cited
Sammer, Christine Elizabeth. “How Should You Respond to Hypoglycemia?” Nursing, vol. 31, no. 7, July 2001, p. 48. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=5877116&site=ehost-live
Verdon, R. “Forgetfulness.” Mind, vol. 2, no. 8, 1877, pp. 437–52. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2246835. Accessed 24 Sep. 2023.