ACCOZZAGLIA

Finally, after a two-month hiccup of so much obstructing it from happening, I composed a first draft yesterday of the personal statement supporting my application for undergraduate admissions at U of T (and the groundwork for the same at York University).

It is only warranted in circumstances where incidents may have negatively affected academic performance (or access to higher education, as I interpreted it). I was hesitant to write this, because I worry that it treads the fine line between making a legitimate case and conducting a sob story. I’m letting a few people review and offer feedback for me. I may recruit a few of you to do the same in a second round of reviews. I’ll keep you posted.

There isn’t any way to put it lightly: it hasn’t been an easy, unobstructed journey. Learning opportunities have been far and few between, and being able to do so without unusual or harsh interruptions has been rather difficult. While my secondary and post-secondary work wasn’t horrible, the respective 3.2 and 3.78 GPAs for these are far below what I was satisfied to have, the distractions lending to such quite real and significant.

Also, being the product of a public school system which placed all its eggs into the standardized testing prep basket, my ability to learn at my own pace was thwarted from primary school through grade twelve graduation. My only saving grace was the primary school gifted programme where I was privy to kinaesthetic learning activities in three different classes: archaeology, astronomy and physiology. Other than that, I felt like I was always grinding against and producing sparks with the academic framework under which I was bound — never mind extracurricular distractions like physical and emotional abuse, institutionalization for teenage depression, and being extracted from home in the middle of the night by parents of friends during finals week in grade ten, for fear that my life was in immediate danger. It probably was, but I was on autopilot back then and let little of it faze me on that level.

Oh yeah. Did I mention that I was coming of age as a queer child in the state of Texas, in the 1980s, during the Reagan administration, in a suburb sandwiched between an air force base and a federal aeronautical institution? Yeah. It was a bit of a challenge.

Further, I had to turn down an acceptance for admission once in 1997 because of other things in which I found myself unexpectedly mired, and I don’t wish to cancel my goals again — certainly not my goals for learning.

Nevertheless, I feel it worth mentioning. So there. I’ll go back to hiding now.