The Ones Who Have Become Adjusted

This past week has been an emotional rollercoaster. I've had so many ups and downs that I wasn't sure which way was up. I had begun to lose myself in a vast sea of the unknown and started to worry more and more about myself; I had let my "natural default setting" get the best of me and it was starting to wear me down. I started to think I wasn't good enough for to be in an AP class; a conversation I had overheard about me not being worthy of the grades I got was always in the back of my mind; I started to doubt that I would ever get anywhere in life because I am black. Luckily for me, five extraordinary people, the Adjusted Ones, came along and helped me. They listened to me while I cried and gave me some great advice that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. These five people I never really talked to and the fact that I opened up to them made me realize they had "adjusted" their settings and for an hour made me the center of their universe.

This experience made me think of David Foster Wallace's speech, "This is Water." In the speech he talks about how some people have adjusted their natural settings and I didn't really understand what Wallace meant until today. To have adjusted settings means not conforming to what society wants you to be. Every single person that I talked to was different from what society what have wanted; they came out of the water. It is through experiences, and life lessons, and selflessness that a fish can achieve this. The Adjusted Ones have achieved "the most important kind of freedom...real freedom." They have learned to "sacrifice" for others by being "aware" of the fact that other people have bigger problems than their own and that they are not the center of the universe. I hope to achieve true freedom someday. It will be my biggest accomplishment.