2018, Corbin Walker, HWRA , Weber HS, Awardee

The definition of resilience is “the capacity to recover from difficulty”.

It doesn’t matter if this difficulty came about physically, mentally, or emotionally. If you have the capacity to recover from difficulty, you express resilience.

When I was in 9th grade I was told I suffer from depression. I didn’t believe it because I’ve always been someone who wants to be everybody’s friend and I’m always happy. But as I got older and started to mature I guess this became less of a fact and more of a hope.

I fell into a state of pure emptiness. I became a slave to a typical routine. I once heard a quote that said “Every morning when I wake up I ask myself ‘If today were my last day to live am I going to want to do what I’m about to do today?’ and if the answer is ‘no’ then somethings got to change.”
For 3 years I did the same thing everyday. The worst part is I knew I wanted to change. I just never did.

I felt that I didn’t have any friends, and if I did they didn’t care about me truly. Because of this I became angry and because I was angry I became a bully and because I was a bully I then didn’t have anyone who wanted to be my friend. I realized late that if I didn’t have anybody it’s because I didn’t let them be my friend.

I went under self esteem issues and feeling like I wasn’t enough. These erroneous thoughts clouded my mind for a long time. Finally, I decided not to focus on other people I needed to seek the approval of one person above all others, myself. I happily say that I was very selfish for a long time. I only focused on me because I wanted to get better. Being selfish is what I needed.

To improve I needed to take things one step at a time. First, I needed to find emotional balance, Second, I wanted to expand my mental capacity and I decided to learn something new every day. Third, develop my physical body to be where I want it to be. By stepping away from social judgement I started out well in finding emotional balance.

I became very proud of my success in completing step number two, expanding my education. I made a list of things that interested me, anything at all. I wanted to learn as much about these things as possible until I knew as much as I could or if they ceased to interest me. In doing this, I found the one thing I love most and what I am working on to make a career in. Filmmaking. At any given moment you can ask me the name of an actor, the name of a character, what movies they’ve been in, movie trivia, or more complex “behind the scenes” questions and I could tell you anything you’d want to know. This has been the number one thing I’ve continued to learn about for 4 years. I love everything about the movies and everything that goes into it.

I find it very interesting how the reason I was depressed is because I felt alone but the way I got better is because I stepped back from society to be alone and focus on myself. I continue to expand my mind, my body, and myself. I expand my disbelief. The only way to get something done you think you can’t do, is to do it anyway.

I quote Steve Jobs, “The one’s who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”