Personal Narrative Essay About Being Relentless

"Relentless"

My cursor hovered over the “Publish” button for only a fraction of a second before clicking. But the truth is I had spent days debating whether or not to release the game. But to me, it wasn’t a game: it was part of me.

The story of this game started 7 years prior, before my obsession began. It started when my fifth grade technology teacher introduced our class to Scratch: a programming language design to introduce kids to coding. The interface was simple but familiar; lines of code were replaced with lego-esque blocks that you could stack. Despite the simplicity, I was hooked.

I fell in love with creating.

I spent countless nights forging project after project. After two years, I was the only one of my friends who still

As a sophomore I took AP Computer Science, a course populated mostly by seniors. I attended TechOlympics, the largest technology event for high school students in the nation. For fun I entered a coding competition there. I wanted to challenge myself. I competed against seniors and juniors from around Cincinnati. And I won. As a sophomore. To this day that memory feels like a dream, it was unbelievable. This lead to a summer internship with Luxottica where I worked on a development team. The experience reaffirmed my dream of becoming a computer scientist.

For kicks, I decided to compare my work to my old work on Scratch to see how far I had come. While looking at my old project, I found one I never released. It was the most ambitious idea I had, but one I could never fully realize. It was a platformer like Mario, but instead it took place on the surface of a cube. But programming 3D was beyond my seventh grade mind.

I had to finish it.

I spent the next months recreating what I originally envisioned, using the skills I had learned over the years. I was afraid to release it, and spent weeks perfecting it, but I did it. It took years but I finally created what I envisioned.

What should I create