Throughout my nearly four years at Los Altos High School, I have had one word repeating through my head over and over: time. As I learned from my freshman English teacher Michael Smith, time is something that you can never get back. So while I, like anybody, had many regrettable mistakes, I have chosen to grow from these instead of ruminating. So I come to apologize to all the teachers that I have wasted time with:

 Mr. Russo

 Ms. Ignacio

 Ms. Hughes

 Ms. Wemmer

 Mr. Smith

 Ms. Hwang

I wasted their time, and they watched me waste mine. But it’s with failure that growth can happen. So while I am taking normal chemistry in my final year, I try to thrive because it’s not about the scenarios that one finds themselves in; it’s their reactions to them.

As George Janko said, “If there are two wolves, one is chained up in the dark, and the other in the light. Which one lives?” The answer is simple, it’s the one you feed. Because no matter what scenario I find myself in, I have a choice, a duty to continue moving forward. So while I could choose to feed the wolf in the dark, and cling onto negativity my whole life, I make sure to live in the light. 

My mentality and identity is shaped by a once popular television show, simply titled “The Flash.” The show’s main focus is on how valuable time is — to accept your past, because it shapes who you are and who you will become. 

After changing the past, Barry Allen has to face the consequences of time travel. It showed how without events in your past, you will have a completely different life. This is something that plays into my life, as I like who I am, and don’t want to know who I would be if I didn’t do certain things, because that wouldn’t be me. 

When accidentally seeing the future, Barry sees his fiance getting murdered by a villain. After hyper-fixating on trying to prevent it, a loved one gets taken and tortured by the same villain. Finally understanding that he has to deal with the future how it was meant to play out, he accepts his fate. 

Fate is something that I like to think is real, and as said in the show, “a man often meets his destiny on the very road he takes to avoid it.” So instead of trying to avoid something that will inevitably take place, march towards it, head on, because everyone is destined for greatness.