Describe a significant event in your life and how it has influenced you.

Seriously? I can't believe that years of hard work, studying, and planning has come down to having to answer these kinds of questions.

Okay. I can do this. I've written fifteen hundred words on how prehistoric drawings influenced how we communicate today. I can certainly wrangle up something about myself to persuade a scholarship committee to give me money.

No pressure or anything.

What do they even mean by "significant"? I'm seventeen. Getting a huge pimple right before class photos is a major life event. Being called on it in class when you don't know the answer is a big deal. Let's be real: when our small town got a second screen added to the movie theater, it was front-page news for weeks. So my idea of significant might be a tad underwhelming to anyone else.

I get they probably mean something truly momentous. That right there is the problem. I have a pretty quiet life. I do really well in school and stay out of trouble. My life is the opposite of significant. It's ... my life.

I live in the tiny town of Valley Falls, Wisconsin. Nothing here really changes, and I like that. Dad and I had lived in five different cities before we finally settled here eight years ago. It's a great life, but that doesn't help me answer this essay question.

Has my existence truly been unremarkable?

Seventeen years and nothing to show for it.