College Essay (Melrose High School Student, University of New Hampshire College of Engineering)
To this day, I’m proud to say I was the first of my brothers to ride a bike without training wheels. It might sound like a small childhood win—but for me, it was a milestone no one expected. Before I could walk, or even breathe on my own, I had to fight just to stay alive.
I was born with Meconium Aspiration Syndrome and immediately placed on ECMO, a machine that kept me alive while my lungs healed. I spent my first month in the hospital with feeding tubes, careful monitoring, and a team of specialists preparing my parents for the possibility of long-term complications. When I was stable enough to go home, I began Early Intervention therapies—speech, occupational, and physical—to help me reach the milestones other kids achieved naturally.
Those specialists quickly noticed something about me: I was determined. I wanted to run up the stairs like my brothers, not crawl. I wanted to keep up, even when my body wasn’t ready. My parents continued the exercises long after my program ended, cheering each tiny victory.
But the moment that defined me happened in our driveway when I was two years old.
Every morning after dropping my brothers at school, I begged my mom to practice riding my two-wheeled bike. The seat was red and slightly too big for me; my toes barely skimmed the ground. I would wobble, fall, scrape my knees, and pop back up. “Again,” I’d say, before the sting had even settled.
My mom would run behind me, one hand on the back of the seat, the other steadying the handlebars. I could hear her breath—half nerves, half hope—as I pedaled. The sun warmed my back. Sweat gathered under my helmet. Then one day, I didn’t feel her hands anymore.
I was moving forward on my own.
The wind hit my face. The world opened. I wasn’t thinking about my lungs or therapy or milestones. I was free. I was riding. At two years and nine months—me, the kid who wasn’t expected to crawl on time—was the first of my brothers to ride without training wheels.
That moment has stayed with me for eighteen years. I keep that old bike in the back of our garage. Its chain is rusted now, and my red helmet hangs from the handlebars. My mom tells me we should throw it out, but I won’t let her. It’s more than a bike; it’s the first proof that I could overcome odds stacked against me.
I didn’t become a “biker” after that. I grew into new passions—hockey, lacrosse, school. But the determination that got me on that bike shows up everywhere in my life. Before high school even started, I was the kid pushing myself to take 300 hockey shots a day in the driveway, long before anyone was watching. In the summer heat, I’d drag a lacrosse net to the field and practice alone for hours. When I made varsity teams, I didn’t see it as a finish line—I saw it as the start of the real work. The same was true in the classroom. When a class challenged me, I didn’t settle. I pushed. I fell. I got up. Again.
I am not defined by ECMO, or oxygen tubes, or the milestones doctors thought I wouldn’t reach. I am defined by the kid who refused to stop pedaling, who kept asking for “one more try,” who believed that if I worked hard enough, I could stay upright.
That is why I keep the bike. It reminds me that I am capable of more than what is expected of me. It reminds me that progress isn’t always graceful—it’s often sweat, scraped knees, and getting back on the seat when it would be easier to quit.
It reminds me that I’ve been letting go—and moving forward—my whole life.