Personal Statement (Fall 2012)

This was my personal statement that I sent to Western last year. It's amazing how things change and I wonder what I would write differently if I had to write another one today.

Personal Statement

 In everyone’s lives there comes an opportunity to do something that could change them forever, the moments that define someone are the chances that they take. But if every person were to wait for the perfect moment to arise, the best weather, or time to go- nothing amazing would ever happen. It will always be raining, there will never be enough time, and you will never have enough money or all the right gear. The opportunity to accomplish something will pass by and eventually be your biggest regret.

College is the biggest opportunity I have ever been given, it’s a chance at becoming something more than what I ever thought possible and a way to break away from everything I have ever known. I have been told by everyone that has heard that I wanted to go to Western that Gunnison is too cold, too small, and too windy. But they don’t know me. They don’t know that those same things will be exactly what I will love about it.

               The summer of 2011, my dad and I did what even we weren’t sure we could accomplish. We left Southern California in a 1986 Suzuki Samurai; it was close to ninety degrees. Our only plan, to reach the Arctic Circle before it was snowing too hard for us to keep going and to not tell anyone where we were going until we got there.

               There is never going to be a good time to drive North 3200 miles in any car, let alone an old Samurai. I was a part time student with two jobs and my dad was flying between Taiwan and California for work, making our schedules fit together was a challenge in and of itself. Making it there before fall was another.

               In Alaska, you can only count on two things- that while you are there it will rain and then it will rain some more. Road conditions along the Dalton Highway are always questionable; between broken glass, pot holes and wildlife the size of a minivan, you grow accustomed to roughing it. Just because on the map there is a town, does not mean anyone will be there selling gas, food or water. Even though you are going to be on a Ferry for 4 straight days, this does not mean you will be given a bed or that you will be sleeping inside. Despite the fact that your sleeping bag says it is made for temperatures between 0 and 25 degrees, it may not be warm enough. All of the unexpected made the adventure that much more spectacular. By the end of October, when we hit the pull off sign for the Arctic Circle, I was used to wearing rain boots, being muddy, and sleeping in a lawn chair on the back of a boat underneath the stars.

               At every gas station, campground, or diner there are people from all different backgrounds and areas of the world. On the 4^th of July, we went to a small town celebration to watch the most patriotic ‘Parade of the Species’ I had ever seen. In the middle of absolutely nowhere we met a man who was closing up shop October 1^st for Winter who had adopted and raised 18 children putting 12 of them through college. The men responsible for the security of the pipeline were the kind of characters you would rather have on your side. Fifty miles north of the Arctic Circle we had coffee with the housewives of Oil Truckers who had secret games of poker while the men were away. These were people all in Alaska for different reasons who wanted nothing more than to hear why we had brought our little car all that way-Sociology at it’s finest.

               We left Alaska with less than ten dollars, some Sourdough starter, holes in our rain boots, and a story to leave us standing a little taller. When we tell people where we went and how we got there, they all have the same things to say, did we know anyone there? Are we crazy? Why did we do it? To which we always reply we do now, why not, and wouldn’t you?

               The problem is that most people can come up with a million reasons not to go. They are broke, they’ve got a job, it will be cold, I’m too old, too young, and I don’t even own a tent. But if we had let any of those things stop us, I would have stood in my own way of experiencing something worth sleeping on the frozen ground in the rain for. I don’t know anyone in Gunnison, maybe everyone is right, and I don’t know what will happen. What I do know is that I’ve done crazier things, under worse conditions, with less of a plan. Sometimes you just have to jump on in with both feet. Moving two hundred sixty miles, just my dog and what I can fit in my car is nothing in comparison to driving to the Arctic Circle for no reason, but it’s an opportunity to do something I have never done before, with a whole different group of people, in an entirely new place.