I hate clichés (at this point, it’s probably a cliché to even point that out), but they always seem to crop up. They're constant weeds in my writing. So, I suppose that, like any other weed, it may be best to just call them flowers and embrace them. In my own writing, I try to incorporate them into “my voice,” whatever that may mean. “The voice” is quite a strange concept, generally different from a person’s speaking mannerisms and more like the organization of a person’s thoughts. It’s an idea that I’ve only worked to develop recently, which is one of my greatest regrets.

My inability to develop such a voice was certainly one of my greatest regrets when writing my college application. The effort that I put in ultimately the resulted in where I am today, but I hate and regret that I needed to tailor my style to a more technical tone in order to market myself more to colleges. I regret even more that I was never able to write about a topic that I was passionate about. The subject that I ended up choosing was a story of how I broke into my own house, a seemingly clever and ultimately blind attempt to illustrate my self-described creativity and persistence. Why did I choose this? It was primarily for the sake of creativity. At a particular information session, I took the advice of avoiding clichés perhaps a bit too much to heart. Coincidentally, the one cliché to avoid was the one that I wished to write about: pushing through the pain.

I completely understand why an admissions officer would urge students to avoid this topic. They sit with a stack of near-identical applications and then proceed to distinguish them through their essays, hoping for some insight or background and perhaps stumbling on an unpolished diamond. The essay is a narrative of a particular sporting event, a soccer game, a track meet, etc. Having few trials and tribulations to draw from, the student is forced to resort to such a single sports event. Ultimately, they use it as a microcosm of the greater persistence and grit embedded in their personality, making them seem successful and desirable to the university. So, I said that this talk ultimately made me wish to avoid the topic of “pushing through the pain.” I regret that choice, as I also regret my technical tone. Shortly, I’m going to attempt to make amends for those regrets to a very limited extent. I cannot be certain why I feel the need to do this. It's partially related to some level of narcissism, but also due to a desire to stretch my wings and explore a new voice that I’ve practiced.

I honestly agree with the admissions officer, writing about a single sports event isn't the best way to establish a larger image of overall persistence. However, my purpose isn’t to write about a single sporting event. My intent (and here comes the cliché) is to write about a lifestyle: distance running. I had joined the middle school track team and participated with relative success, particularly by the standards of that age. In my freshman year of high school, I did not begin track and field until spring. My 5:39 mile was dismal when compared to my peers and I aspired to go under five minutes. Yes, disappointment was a part of the end of that season, but there was a feeling of biding my time. I had time, as I was only a freshman. I had ended my pursuits in basketball and soccer at that point, neither were sports that I saw potential in. To be fair, I wasn’t certain that track and cross country could be the sports that I saw myself in, either. Regardless, it was my sport now.

Summer preparation started slowly with a mile here and two there. It’s tough in the beating sun, but I always made sure that I got something in. Day one of sophomore year, the run was seven miles (to scare the unprepared). I wasn’t quite sure of myself at that point either. When we broke off on that first day into JV and Varsity groups, my friends had to nudge me slightly into the varsity crew. It doesn’t matter if I live ten more years or 100 more years, it’s a decision that I will never regret. The summer training that I did made the rest of the season possible. I won’t say that it gave me an extra leg up on my peers. Instead, it prevented the fall training from becoming an impossibly daunting task. It turns out that the first day's run of seven miles was far from a single occurrence. It was consistent and then rapidly bumped up higher. The elite crew, a group of about seven or eight, took the lead and ran the furthest and fastest. They weren’t giving their all, of course, because they didn’t have to. I did. Every day felt like it broke me down. Many days were spent lying on the track floor, eyes closed, and feeling the dizzying mix of nausea and a searing headache. It was hard to say whether the headache came from the deprivation of water or oxygen. The pain never disappeared. It probably never will, but it became manageable. I was perhaps pushing harder than those elite seven or eight to keep up, but, eventually, I didn't lie on the ground in misery after each workout. I wasn’t proving myself at any single run or at any single meet. Finishing a run in first on any day meant nothing. It was a matter of staying up each day. It became a lifestyle: getting to bed early for proper recovery and eating salads, bread, and white meat every day. The thing is (and it is a cliché to say so), it paid off. It built muscle, it built character, and it developed the belief that consistent endurance traverses obstacles.