College Admissions Essay: Depression In High School

High school is a wonderfully awkward, exciting, and confusing time. Me, well, I was lucky. High school was easy. I could ace classes without much effort. By the end of my sophomore year I was ready to be done, high school bored me. Junior year rolled around and things started to change. I started to feel very insecure and unworthy. These feelings didn’t develop overnight, but soon I was comparing myself to everyone, and I felt inferior. Everyone around me seemed to get better grades, or had more athletic talent than I did. After more time passed, these feelings didn’t go away. I had developed severe depression and anxiety by the time I was a senior in high school. I had thoughts of hurting myself, and I felt completely alone. Eventually, my best friend intervened and with the help of my parents, I went to counseling. I started taking anti-depressants and things really turned around. I felt
I moved away from home for the first time and I was out on my own. It was a very overwhelming and hard year. The classes were much more rigorous than I had expected. I could no longer simply attend class and pass the tests like I had done in high school. During this time of transition and change, my depression and anxiety never fully left me. Don’t get me wrong, my depression was mostly gone and my anxiety had improved immensely, but it was always there, and I just wanted to make it go away.
During this same time, I took an introduction psychology course. I was amazed by all of the different areas of psychological study, but what most intrigued me was the mental health field. I learned that 40 million Americans over the age of 18 suffer from anxiety disorders. While that statistic is shocking, for me it was also comforting. I wasn’t the only one that felt this, and many other people struggle with the same things I do. I discovered my passion for psychology in that introductory course, and it led me to major in psychological