Karson Mingo Essays - Emotions, Evolutionary Psychology, Fear

Karson Mingo Mr. Parry English IV 13 November 2017 Fear Fear, on the most personal level, can completely control your life. It paralyzes you from being able to resist nothing more than mental restrain. It prohibits you from being able to truly express yourself in hope you spare yourself embarrassment from peers. In my life there are few physical things that I fear as they seem more as abstract concepts. Many kids my age fear going off to college and being on their own. However, that feeling of being an independent seems as just another experience for me to live. The things that I'm able to take head on are not scary at all to me but more social and personal interactions are the things I fear. When I was five I was first fitted for my glasses. Thinking to myself that I would finally be able to read I thought nothing of the social harassment that would ensue. Over the next three years on a daily basis I was called names, had rocks and dog poop thrown at me, and when I decided to fight back heavily pummeled by older kids. Eventually, I was able to talk my parents into buy my contacts. Sometimes when I ran out of my contacts I would "forget" my glasses at home so I would not have to wear them. Even today I only wear my contacts because I get afraid of wearing glasses. Obviously today I know that no one is going to throw dog poop at me but I have never had the confidence to wear them just because of the fear of something like that happening again. I fear failure in anything I do. Whether its athletically, academically, or in everyday life the last thing I want to do is not succeed. Football wise, during the season I was given astronomical expectations from teammates, coaches, and even local sports writers. At first the expectations were daunting and even scared me a little. Instead of trying to handle the pressure of the expectations by myself I talked to players from previous years to see how they handled the spot light. Eventually once the season started the feeling of having underclassmen look up to me in high pressure situations become normal for me. Instead of being afraid of the expectations, I was embracing them. On top of compiling a senior season earing an All-Area Player of the Year nomination, All-Region consideration, and college football scholarship offers, I earned respect. Respect from teammates, the coaches, but most importantly myself. By telling myself there was essentially no other option tha n embracing the reality of the goals set and not being scared of them, we were able to accomplish a lot during the season. One specific example of this was during our first game of the year. We were losing pretty quickly and people of the team immediately thought the world was ending and started panicking. Instead of allowing them to be down and afraid, with the help of Leo we calmly explained how we were essentially better at football and life than our opponents and we ended up winning 72-14 and went on to win our next seven games. While I don't fear the part of college of going off and being on my own, being denied by colleges is scary. The thought of twelve grinding and miserable years of school almost being a wash because colleges today really only want to look at over valued standardized tests is awful. It almost calls for saying "that's not fair" but as I am told by my parents daily " life's not fair get used to it". For me up until this year my dream school was LSU (Louisiana State University). Ever since I was five it was my dream destination after high school. Unfortunately or fortunately, I've had change of heart because now my goal is to play football in college and LSU is above my pay grade in that regard. However, before my change of heart when I was dead set on LSU, the thought of failing to be accepted gave me actual chest and brain pains. The school isn't a total breeze to get