Personal Statement Essay

Brandon Grobler
November 19th, 1014
Lincoln High School
My personal statement Like many teenage boys, I can usually be found playing video games or banging away on a set of drums. However, my motivations for doing so may differ from those of others. Ever since I can remember, I have dealt with the burden of being epileptic. To be honest, it is not as big a burden as one would generally think. Epilepsy is a neurological disorder of the brain and can cause a majority of different types of seizures. For me, they are milder and usually do not act as a burden in my everyday life.
The one challenge of living with epilepsy that does affect me is that I cannot do certain things in life that other people can. For example, I cannot get my driver’s license or join the military. While I have no plans to join the military, it does mean that I cannot participate in the age-related rite of signing up for the Selective Service with my peers. It is something I could not and can never do. As for driving, I have overcome this and am starting to learn how to drive. The biggest challenge of being epileptic, however, has been my struggle with school. It was in my elementary school years that I realized it was going to be an issue. My fifth grade year, I realized the biggest trigger of my seizures: stress. On a particular fall day, I was working on simple everyday math problems. I remember getting frustrated on a particular problem I could not figure out when all of the sudden everything went dark. Little did I know, I had just collapsed on the ground and begun to have a grand mal seizure. For me, it felt like five seconds later that I woke, dazed and confused. In reality, I was semi-unconscious for at least fifteen to twenty minutes. I could not speak, talk, or even get up and walk. This was the scariest thing I had experienced in my life so far and to this day it still scares me because I know it could happen again. Over the years that followed, I experienced three other seizures, and the thing that stuck out to me when they occurred is that at some point before I had the seizure, I was experiencing stress. This was a giant wake up call for me and I promised myself I would learn to manage my stress.
As a senior in my last year of grade school, I have made major progress in managing my stress and feel I have overcome the challenge of being epileptic. I have learned how to use stress as a tool and managed how I respond to difficult situations. I’m not going to lie—I am still epileptic and I still get stressed. However, being epileptic has become easier to manage. I have seen a giant academic improvement that

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