Being smaller than everyone else drives me to be the best I can be

It was the spring quarter of my freshman year of college at the University of Oregon, and I was sitting around the table at the Carson Dining Hall eating dinner with my friends Connor and Masi.

We were discussing our classes for the quarter, and I had just told them about the tough Anthropology class I was taking (and dreading). I was a General Science major at the time and still had yet to take any of the Chemistry or Biology course sequences. Masi asked me why I wanted to be a General Science major if I was not looking forward to taking all of the science requirements.

He had a good point. He then asked me why I don’t become a sports writer, “because I talk about sports every day.” At the time, I played it off as a joke.

After dinner when I went to my room, I absorbed what Masi told me and thought about it for a long time. I did love sports, especially basketball. I played basketball from the time I was seven years old until now, and I constantly talked about basketball. Could I be a professional basketball writer for major publications such as ESPN and Bleacher Report? After all, I had written books in first and second grade about basketball (“LeBron James: NBA All-Star” and “The Golden State Warriors vs. The Houston Rockets”), though those were just an elementary schooler’s idea of fun.

I had my doubts, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that sports journalism was the right path for me. And truth be told, I’d been through things much more difficult than switching majors.

Almost twenty-one years ago, my mother gave birth to the smallest baby at Stanford Hospital – 11.8 ounces. That was me. Being as small as I was, I had to stay in the hospital for five months because my organs were not fully developed. Coming out of the hospital, I was still very small at three pounds and 12 ounces. As I started to develop and grow, I had a feeding tube because I was so small. I had it until I was about five or six years old and I had it closed up. Even today, I still have the small scar on the left side of my stomach from my feeding tube when I was little.

There was a time in summer 2010 when my dad, brother, some other family friends, and I went on a backpacking trip to Mount Whitney, the highest mountain in the transcontinental United States. At the time, I was a scrawny 90 pounds and carrying a 25-pound backpack filled with necessities for the week-long hike. I kept trudging along using every ounce of strength and energy I had to get to the top of Mount Whitney. Getting to the top of the 14,505 feet mountain was a relief and I felt as if I was (literally and figuratively) on top of the world.

With everything I’ve gone through in my life, backpacking Mt. Whitney was one of my greatest accomplishments because I was determined to get to the top carrying a backpack that was about one-fourth of my body weight.

Being smaller than everyone else drives me to be the best that I can be. I would always be the kid sitting in the front row for first-grade pictures and the smallest guy on the court playing basketball, but that would not stop me from reaching my goal of becoming one of the best NBA writers in the world. I have always had the drive, passion, and hunger to be the best. I know what journalists have to go through every day. The scrutiny and criticism. I understand that firsthand.

Another unique thing I went through as a baby was that one of my vocal folds was bigger than the other, and it had to work twice as hard to produce sound. It was tough because every time I met someone new, they would always ask if I was sick or say “what happened to your voice?” It made me insecure, and is the main reason I am so shy and quiet.

However, this only further fuels my desire to be a journalist: It’s a way for me to make my voice heard in spite of all the criticism I’ve faced throughout my life.

As that quarter freshman year went on, I thought more and more about changing my major from General Science to Journalism. I talked to my parents about it, and although they were unsure at first (due to the lack of reading I did and how I was not on the yearbook staff or working for my high school’s newspaper), they eventually gave in, and I signed up to take the journalism prerequisite courses.

So go ahead: Doubt me. Criticize me. Scrutinize me. Say or do whatever you want. It won’t stop me.

I have a lifetime experience with criticism, and I’m ready to showcase and voice my abilities in the sports journalism world.