Reuben Barnes College Essay
I sit on my bedroom floor with a PlayStation 4 controller in my hand, furiously fiddling with all of the buttons and sticks that compose the controller. I am frantically yelling out commands to my fellow teammates who are playing the game with me as we are trying to beat what seems as an impossible task, yet each time we try to complete the task we are closer to accomplishing our goal. After multiple struggles and weary hours we have finally completed the mission at hand, I slump back and exhale a sigh of relief while the rest of my team yell with excitement. Suddenly my father bursts through the door and sees what I am doing, without hesitation he glares at me and grumbles “You waste your time and knowledge with these games son, they will never help you in life” and walks away.
I have always remembered that comment and for the longest time I thought he was correct, that I was just wasting my time with video games. Soon after my Physics class in school was given a project, our job was to create a bottle rocket that could successfully launch. This seemed like it would be a fun project until it soon came to my attention that the partner whom I had been paired with was a student that I did not have many interactions with or know very well. At first I was not worried about it and just ignored my concerns, but as the days passed and the little communication or teamwork there was between caused the project to spiral down into a huge mess of unhappiness and failure. By the time the project was due we were struggling to finish our rocket and prepare it for launch, when the launch time came our rocket was a total disaster.
Failing that project was a huge part in my life and it is something that I try to forget about, yet at the same time it showed me I was missing a crucial skill. So throughout my life and as I progressed through school I have come to the conclusion that my father was wildly inaccurate with his assumptions. You see, through gaming and the interactions I have had with teammates online I have been able to create a new skill that I never had in my earlier years. This skill was simply teamwork, I then began to realize if I were to apply this skill to other important things in my life such as school and the projects I do then I would be more successful just like I am in my games.
So I began to do this and I focused on strengthening the skill by applying it to the next project presented before me. This project was to create a musical instrument with any tools and materials we could get our hands on. Once again it was a person who I did not have much experience working with. Yet with lots of effort and communication we were both able to come up with many ideas, finally we came to an agreement and chose to build a sort of PVC instrument. In the end and when we were presenting the project it was a huge success and the two of us were very proud of what we had just created. In the end I was confident this skill was what would push me to succeed in life.
I sit on my bedroom floor with a PlayStation 4 controller in my hand, furiously fiddling with all of the buttons and sticks that compose the controller. I am frantically yelling out commands to my fellow teammates who are playing the game with me as we are trying to beat what seems as an impossible task, yet each time we try to complete the task we are closer to accomplishing our goal. After multiple struggles and weary hours we have finally completed the mission at hand, I slump back and exhale a sigh of relief while the rest of my team yell with excitement. Suddenly my father bursts through the door and sees what I am doing, without hesitation he glares at me and grumbles “You waste your time and knowledge with these games son, they will never help you in life” and walks away.
I have always remembered that comment and for the longest time I thought he was correct, that I was just wasting my time with video games. Soon after my Physics class in school was given a project, our job was to create a bottle rocket that could successfully launch. This seemed like it would be a fun project until it soon came to my attention that the partner whom I had been paired with was a student that I did not have many interactions with or know very well. At first I was not worried about it and just ignored my concerns, but as the days passed and the little communication or teamwork there was between caused the project to spiral down into a huge mess of unhappiness and failure. By the time the project was due we were struggling to finish our rocket and prepare it for launch, when the launch time came our rocket was a total disaster.
Failing that project was a huge part in my life and it is something that I try to forget about, yet at the same time it showed me I was missing a crucial skill. So throughout my life and as I progressed through school I have come to the conclusion that my father was wildly inaccurate with his assumptions. You see, through gaming and the interactions I have had with teammates online I have been able to create a new skill that I never had in my earlier years. This skill was simply teamwork, I then began to realize if I were to apply this skill to other important things in my life such as school and the projects I do then I would be more successful just like I am in my games.
So I began to do this and I focused on strengthening the skill by applying it to the next project presented before me. This project was to create a musical instrument with any tools and materials we could get our hands on. Once again it was a person who I did not have much experience working with. Yet with lots of effort and communication we were both able to come up with many ideas, finally we came to an agreement and chose to build a sort of PVC instrument. In the end and when we were presenting the project it was a huge success and the two of us were very proud of what we had just created. In the end I was confident this skill was what would push me to succeed in life.