College essays + Starcraft

      I am not a proper Southern child. Despite growing up in the South, and living around what most would call the remnants of the Old South, I am an atypical southern boy. Following professional gaming, or E-Sports, is unheard of in the South. It is weird, even impossible, to explain to most where I live. The staying up late, the perseverance required to stay with something when everyone gives me a strange look when I bring it up, following E-Sports requires an unquestioned love of the scene. The system is complex, but team affiliation is straightforward; E-Sports devotees do not just watch their favorite teams, they bleed team colors. Following E-Sports is not a popular southern practice, and yet I love that I do. I cannot help but love watching the competitions, the late nights, and even the fact that I can have this experience when so many others simply overlook it. It is something I appreciate, that I know people older than me would balk at the idea. Similarly, skateboarding has become an activity that contrasts against the background I come from. Like following E-Sports, skateboarding requires a love that remains past all the near-death experiences; to skateboard in the South means staying on the board when people speed at you. At first one would think that skateboarding would not equal a social interaction that bucks against the system, but in my experience it signals even greater defiance than normal teenage rebellion. I personally enjoy longboarding and skateboarding immensely, but, to the old money that enjoy trying to hit me with their cars, either activity seems to mark me as a social misfit bent on ruining good areas with my dissidence. It takes a certain perseverance to continue doing an activity after being pulled over by security officers for simply doing the activity in my neighborhood. I do not think that I am not enormously rebellious, but society does not see it my way. Though, any way I put it, I am not a southern good ol’ boy.

      Creativity in the blink of an eye…no, faster than that, so fast that the linear erupts into the third dimension. Its deceptive initial adagio springs into a fusion of frenetic activity. It starts off slow, and it slowly builds exponentially, until it hits its apex at over 300 actions a minute. It starts to hit its full swing, creativity happening so fast that the reasons behind the actions become hard to discern, one logical step after the next with no thought behind the logic. They expand their field of view, everywhere all at once, like gods ruling over their own dominion, not one detail is missed, no action imperfect. A vivid picture is being painted through the strokes of creativity at a blistering speed. Then at once, the creativity explodes; it blossoms into an ever-changing picture of movement so fast most couldn’t hope to keep up. Finally, it’s at full bloom, every movement seems cold and calculated, a meter takes over the hands, a rhythm forms. The rhythm starts to choose its side, but the hands move faster to take the rhythm back. Suddenly something happens, anything happens, the creative license to do anything at any time happens, and most importantly right now happens. It morphs into a different style, that something begins to snowball, becoming something impossible to confront. This snowball entrances everyone who sees it, and it becomes the coup-de-grace at the end, an unstoppable force, a victor is crowned. That is why I love Starcraft.