Life In The Deep End – UW Personal Essay

By Nathaniel Jones

My life as a dentist can be summed up in one word: fictional. My life as a human being, however, requires just a little bit more of an explanation. My name is Nathaniel Jones. I am 18 years old. I am... beautiful. My life is beautiful. My world is beautiful. The way I over use the word 'beautiful' in my personal essay is beautiful. And I believe that we, meaning your school and myself, would be beautiful together.

Although my life is beautiful, the steps I took to reach my blissful state did not always seem so beautiful at the time. One such step was the time I took swimming lessons at a local pool. Since it was an indoor pool, I felt that I had little reason to fear an enormous alligator swimming out and devouring everyone. What I DID have reason to fear, on the other hand, was the swimming teacher. Yes, the swimming teacher, defined by Webster as a person who is being paid to stick the heads of defenseless children underwater until they drown, which usually happens once or twice in the duration of each lesson. Now a bit of history: before the time that this story takes place I took swimming lessons from a very friendly person. Friendly, meaning, of course, that she would put the swimmers on the stairs to crawl around, instead of actually being forced to, say, swim. And it was good. Now back to the story. As I began the class, I was expecting once more to be able to do the alligator crawl on the steps (although alligators that devour pools full of people frighten me, I feel no real aversion to pretending to be one myself.) But I was mistaken. Not only did we leave the safety of the steps, we left the safety of the shallow end of the pool.

Now you must keep in mind that I was probably only about four feet tall myself, so the idea of swimming in water that was five feet deep seemed insane to me. I'm a senior in high school now, so I realize that the cause for this feeling was that five minus four equals one full foot over my head, which, according to my logic, means instant death. Now, I don't know about you, but instant death, to me, is not the kind of thing I would consider and "enjoyable" experience. Unlike, say, attending the University of Washington. Wink wink.

But anyway, back to the story. The swimming teacher (or for the politically correct folks out there, the 'Aquatic Education Supervisor') was apparently a sadist, because after sending us out to the middle of the pool, we were forced to actually stick our heads under water, and then, now get this, blow bubbles. That's right, BLOW BUBBLES, UNDERWATER, in the MIDDLE of the pool. The wonderful air that was in my lungs, keeping me alive in the treacherous world of heated water, chlorine, and urine from the preschool class that was using the pool at the same time as us was being let out, the only point of which, to the best of my knowledge, was so the students would be too distracted by the fun Blub Blub noise to hear the instructor laughing maniacally at our misery and pain. Skipping ahead to the end of my swimming days, the question becomes this: in what great and profound way has my swimming experience altered my life? The answer is as follows: As I was struggling to survive in the deep end of the pool, I learned a valuable life lesson that I use when I find myself struggling in the "deep waters" of life. At times such as these, I take a look back to those long ago days, and remember what I learned in that swimming class: Although the bottom of the pool seems far below, and the safety of the wall seems far away, as long as we keep our feet kicking and our arms moving, we always seem make it through somehow. And when we are through learning what the experience has to teach us, often times we can get an ice cream sandwich from the lobby. And that is a beautiful thing, if for no other reason than the fact that ice cream sandwiches are awesome. Although, if I really were a dentist, I might say otherwise.