Describe a risk you have taken and discuss its impact on your life. (Kalamazoo College)

Risks are present everywhere. Some people take them, and others leave them behind. Like toys on a shelf, they wait to be selected, and even sometimes bought. When we take one from the shelf, that toy has the potential to make our lives better by giving us joy, while other times the toys can break and make us sad. Either way, everyone takes a toy from the shelf at one point or another. I took a toy from the shelf just recently, when I decided to leave everything behind and move to the town of Hillsboro, Oregon. This decision wasn’t easy, but it was a risk I was willing to, and had to take for my own well-being. Anyone dealing with abuse, in any form, wishes to get away. I was living with my father in the bustling town of Coral Springs, Florida. Things had being going well up until I entered my first year of high school. Despite having almost straight A’s for the entire year, my grades were not good enough. I was lazy, ungrateful, and apparently a terrible child. So my dad made it very clear that my “bad behavior” would be met with yelling, flying backpacks, and grounding for unspecified amounts of time. This led me to believe that I was nothing. And it lasted for years. Until my junior year of high school, I was completely oblivious to the fact that I actually had done nothing wrong. My dad had been managing his own demons such as gambling, drinking, his job, and also the fact that, after my stepmother had left him the year before, I was the only woman in the house that he could attempt to dominate, knowing that I could do nothing about it because I was a child. I was forced to get a job sooner than intended—I had already applied to three and was waiting for responses—and my paychecks were not for my own enjoyment or even for other peoples’. I was not allowed to use my