The other day I was asked why it is so important for me to go to Penn State, graduate, and become successful. The first and most obvious thing that I thought of was to get a good job, of course. But something told me that it wasn’t the real reason. So I looked deeper.

First, I thought of my childhood. I wasn’t sure why this was the thought that came through so clearly. It wasn’t anything special; in fact it was anything but special. Always in the shadow of my sister, the well “not-so-good” relationship with my father, being brought up by my grandparents… I soon saw the reason clear as day.

I’m the middle child and while many people don’t believe the “middle child syndrome.” I feel that I am living proof that the middle child syndrome does exist today.

As the middle child, I was always being compared to my older sister and younger brother. I would always hear my parents talk about how great my sister and brother did and how proud my parents were. However, I would never hear them talk about me to others. My father would talk about me so little that the other wrestling coaches didn’t even know that I existed. For a long time I thought that I was just so mediocre that there was nothing they could be proud of.

I began to step up my schoolwork, doing homework assignments three or four times and beginning to study for tests two or three weeks before the test. I practically killed myself at the track, running until I would either faint or vomit. I did whatever I thought might change their minds about me. But nothing worked and I became very depressed. I gave in to them and my self esteem diminished. Because of this I was steadily loosing friends until it got to the point where I had not one friend whom I felt I could count on. Which, as if my self esteem wasn’t low enough already, dwindled down to almost none. Although my parents didn’t see this sudden change, my grandparents did. They began inviting me down to their house more often, to baseball games and movies, and I grew very close to them and my self esteem rose a little.