College Essay

Growing up in Florida has made me no stranger to widespread power outages during hurricane season. I am all too familiar with the darkness following the storm. Yet nothing had ever prepared me for what happened one night as I walked down a strange street in a foreign country.
In March of my Junior year in high school, my Spanish teacher took a group of students to the Galapagos Islands. The trip was incredible, but one of my most vivid memories occurred on the last night. Our group was walking down the main street in the small city when all of the lights flickered and went off. Apparently this happens all the time, because the residents did not panic, they merely lit candles and continued on as if all was normal. However, us tourists in the middle of the street clung to each other to stay together. A million thoughts ran through my mind, worrying about getting run over by a car or separating from the group. Amid panic, I gripped my friends’ hands even tighter. As my eyes adjusted to the pitch black, something made me look up to the sky and I saw…everything. I saw more stars than I had ever seen before, including the Milky Way. It was incredibly beautiful. The awe of seeing the night sky strewn with billions of stars took my breath away. It was a good thing my friends and I had grabbed hands, because I was too busy gaping at the sky to watch where I was going. Without my friends I would have walked into a building, into a parked car, off the pier…
Thanks to my friends, I did not fall off the pier, I was able to soak in the sight of the universe and learn a few things. Whether the electricity failing was a human error, a faulty generator, or chance, I am grateful it happened because it taught me a few things. I was reminded that even in the darkest periods of life, my friends will always guide me and prevent me from falling. Ever since that night I have avoided taking my friends for granted. I also learned that when you least expect it, Nature will knock you sideways and remind you that it’s still in control. I have not forgotten the feeling of how incredibly large the world is and how tiny we are, like tiny pinpricks of light in the vast night sky. Something so familiar as darkness has so much impact in the right situation. Sometimes the lack of illumination provides the most illumination of all.