college essay

This is the college essay I am submitting to Loyola.  You might notice that at the end I didn't exactly come up with a conclusion so I just left it... hahah definitely my writing weakness

Sitting in the lifeguard chair around noon on July 2^nd, I watched kid after kid jump from the diving board into the pool and swim to the ladder.  Sitting by the diving well required much more vigilance than anywhere else for a few reasons, the first being that only one lifeguard sits by the diving well at a time, as opposed to the five or six usually guarding the main pool.  The second reason is that although the diving well is much smaller and always has fewer occupants than the main pool; people struggle to swim in there more often than they do anywhere else in the entire aquatics department of Westlake.

Although I could usually get a sense for whether or not kids were able to handle the diving board, Steven had a certain confidence that made his ineptitude at swimming elusive to me.  He was 12, and he was only a little shorter than five feet tall.  He simply gave no signs that he did not know how to swim.  I watched him coolly climb up the three-step ladder onto the board; I watched him calmly walk to the edge of the board; I watched him extend his legs and jump right into the 12-foot abyss below him.

As most kids do, he sunk a few feet down but then floated back up to the surface, though he was not moving his arms or legs in a way that indicated he was trying to swim; his movements were more random and spasmodic.  I waited a moment for him to get his bearings in the water, but he did not.

I threw the lifeguard tube that I was supposed to use in these kinds of situations to the side and I dove into the pool.  I grabbed him around his torso with my left arm and used my right arm and legs to propel us to the edge.  Steven was not even shaken up, and he climbed out of the pool like everything was normal.  I however, must have looked white as a sheet, as one of the nearby parents asked me if I was okay.  I said yes, but as I looked down I noticed that my hand was trembling.

Only a month later, I chose to leave my lifeguarding job to work at a local boutique owned by a friend of my mother.  I liked lifeguarding, but I do admit that it was dull at times and that I was looking for something more engaging.  In the few months I have spent working at Cara’s Boutique, I have still been dealing with emergencies, although they tend to be on a much smaller scale and they tend to be along the lines of “what color bracelet should I get for my wife.” 

Between the two jobs I have held, I have learned that most of the important things in life are less likely to be nouns than they are to be verbs.  It is important to love yourself and others; it is important to be generous; it is important to smile.