FINAL COLLEGE ESSAY

“BE YOU”

My dad and I were saying goodbye to each other at the Istanbul Ataturk Airport -which is the one of the busiest airports in Turkey- ; it was two in the morning waiting on the line for the passport check for my flight to the United States of America. My dreams were coming true;i would get to play football in a high school team, go to NBA games. What could I have wanted more? And when I said goodbye to him , only thing he said was“ be you .“

During the flight, I kept hearing his voice when he said”Be you.” I was thinking about the reason he said. But I eventually found out what he really meant through out my journey of being the best in everything I was doing in states.

As I said, I had only one passion in my life, Football. I don't know why my dad wanted me to play football even when the coach told him that “Making a kid play football is like leaving him in the middle of the highway;they are basically the same thing.” But I am so glad that he made me play football while I was playing soccer in the middle of little streets with my friends.

But he wasn't that happy after 3 families came to our house and told him that I injured their kid.

What I really liked about football was that the expansion of my family. I had a locker room fulled of brothers and I never had a brother in my life. Every single time I went to practice, I felt like home. It is a great feeling that there is always somebody got your back covered besides your dad.

But my dad wasn't just a dad to me. He was the only person to me that played roles of multiple characters in my life. He wasn't a dad only, he became my friend, my big brother ,basically everything after my mother's death which really hurt me , also it made me a grown man at age 8 .

When I wasn't sure about going to states and worried about not being successful, I asked my coach for his opinion. And he told me , “ Believe in yourself son, and never forget,when you want to succeed ,as bad as you want to breathe, that's when you will be successful.” and that's when I made my decision to go play football and study in USA. Sometimes you need to sacrifice and leave the people you love and follow your dreams.

I decided to continue my study in high school in the United States of America with my less then Perfect english. When I say perfect , I would go to Mc Donalds and order a Big Mac menu while I wanted some chicken tenders. But football was only thing that was inspiring me to stay in the states.

A culture difference was my big concerned. Every other country has their own culture and the things that are related to your culture might not look good in other countries. But coming to the States really taught me how to communicate with people from other countries and made me learn new cultures. Not only just American culture, I learned people's culture from most of the countries and that really made me really mature and knowledgeable. I was completely a different person and I was way more multicultural and scholar than my friends in Turkey. In one year, I really owned a lot of respect from everybody in my country. It is better to experience something than to just learn about it. That's what made me get a lot of respect from people in Turkey. I was more than a 16 year old teenager , I was a grown man. Not that many people can be brave and go to a different country that you barely know the language and the culture.

My father was right. If I was never being myself , I would be back in my country after one year in Arizona without learning any English. If I was never brave and believed in myself, I would not have gotten the Most Valuable Player award in Arizona , I would not be the youngest person in the national team of my country. But all of the hard work, practices would not mean anything if I never believed in myself.

Only those two words changed my whole life from going to a decent public school in my country to the one of the best high schools in Florida.

Sometimes you need to just be you.

H.Atakan KESKIN