Wednesday, March 11, 2015 // The Statement
7B

Personal Statement: Forging an Iron Man

by Eric Ferguson, Daily Columnist

I

can tell you about three important and seemingly hap-
hazard aspects of the person I was just prior to start-
ing college. First, I was obsessed with grades. Second,

I actively avoided situations where I would have to make a
decision. And third, I had a not-so-minor obsession with the
alternate universes created in the genres of science fiction
and high fantasy.

All three of these aspects of me remain unchanged;

thankfully, many other things have changed. Four years
ago (and in some respects as little as one year ago), I was
incapable of actively thinking about my future and unable to
fully acknowledge the existence of perspectives other than
my own. These attitudes must have led to many unknown-
unknowns; I’m slightly shocked more of them haven’t come
back to bite me in the ass.

But over these last four years I have learned. Now, I have

never felt more confident in who I am and what I want to
do. Hard work, conscious reflection, massive privilege, and
dumb luck are what enabled this; they are factors in an equa-
tion too complex for me to solve. If college is a time for young
adults to broaden their minds, though, I think I have suc-
ceeded.

However,
I’m
not
done.

There’s time left still, and I
want to use part of it to deci-
sively engage questions like
“How’s your semester going?”
“What are you doing after
graduation?” and (most impor-
tantly) “If you could be any fic-
tional character, who would you
choose?” from which I would’ve
shrunk as a freshman here. This
is my chance to answer them.



***

“How’s
your
semester

going?” is a favorite of every
adult I know, and, until this
last semester, it always caused
me somewhat of a panic. My
parents pushed me to achieve
in school from an early age;
they wanted me to do well. I
took that initial push and slow-
ly magnified it. Over time, it
became an obsession at the core
of my entire life.

This obsession propelled me to great heights, but it had

a darker side as well. Until the last few months, I felt as if
grades corresponded to my life. I felt that if I didn’t get nearly
straight-A grades, I would be some kind of worthless waste
of a person. That attitude transferred to other facets of my
life as well. I have often felt as if one misstep among friends
or at an internship would somehow render me worthless.
As such, I was utterly fixated on external evaluations of my
work and my decisions.

I have a certain professor from last semester to thank for

helping me get over this fixation. In his class, he made me
grapple with some of the toughest questions out there —
those pertaining to peacemaking, justice, and reconciliation
in situations of mind-boggling complexity.

Halfway through that class, I became despondent. I had

spent twenty hours working on a single three-page paper
that was supposed to be a reflection on what I had learned
so far in his class, and I thought what I turned in was inco-
herent. I had no idea how to answer that prompt, and I felt

as if I were a dead man.

To my great surprise, I ended up with an A in that class

and some variant of an A in all my others. However, I have
no confidence that these grades are comparable to each
other. Unlike my other professors whose assignments and
exams almost always demanded some kind of definitive
answer to a question, this professor was different. His goal
wasn’t for his students to develop such answers to the ques-
tions he posed; he knew life isn’t that simple. Instead, he
challenged us almost every single class period to state what
we had learned.

I think his overall aim was to have us engage with intense

complexity, and to make people like me realize that there
are no “answers” or “grades” in real life. He taught me that
while utter dependence on external evaluation might seem
helpful in school, it is no way to live. I cannot always wait
for someone else to evaluate my work and my decisions. I
must do so first. He called that job self-leadership; it’s one
I’m finally ready to take on.




***

In the past, my answer to “What are you doing after grad-

uation?” has often been silence. The future wasn’t something
I was at all interested in thinking about, mostly because I
was so fixated on what grades I was getting in school. But
it was also partly because I never really considered the fact
that graduation would eventually happen.

This irrational attitude manifested in many forms, an

early one of which being how I applied to a single university
coming out of high school. Once here, I attempted to be busy
and repeatedly told myself that I was. I learned if I present-
ed that to the world, people generally wouldn’t ask about my
future plans. I let my academic and personal interests run
amok, giving little conscious thought to their organization
or to where they might lead me later on.

But these interests did develop — albeit ever so slowly —

and as they did, I came to know what job opportunities exist
for the policy-obsessed nerd I am. My interests coalesced
into two internships in Washington, D.C. They’ve given me
a valuable head start in the job search, and I will always be
grateful to the people I met in each. Moreover, I’ve realized
that everything I’ve been able to do — from being admitted
to the Ford School of Public Policy to co-founding a student

organization to forging what I hope are lifelong networks
of friends — has ultimately depended not on abstractions,
but on real people. I still need to remind myself of this point
often, and as I move forward in life I resolve to do so until it’s
something I can’t possibly forget.




***

The last (and most important) question is “If you could

be any fictional character, who would you choose?” This
one cuts deep, as I’ve always loved immersing myself in fic-
tional universes. The transcendent abilities of characters
such as Ender Wiggin, Will Stanton, Lyra Belacqua, and
Tony Stark/Iron Man captured my entire imagination as a
child and young adult. I would want to be whichever char-
acter happened to be in front of me. All seemed to have some
power or superhuman understanding that allowed them to
shape the course of their respective universes—all of which
seemed so much better than my boring, real one.

The only answer I can ever remember giving is Iron Man

— as in Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of that character. It
was a slightly ridiculous choice. Iron Man is a suit, not a per-
son. The person who built it is Tony Stark, and what gave

rise to the suit itself was his dis-
covery that the power core he
built to keep bits of shrapnel sus-
pended in his chest could be put
to other, grander uses.

There certainly are benefits

to being such a rich and brilliant
man as Stark; however, there are
massive risks to consider as well.
In the movies, the power of Iron
Man is not something Stark tends
to handle very well. He tends to
think he knows what’s best for
others, and through acting on
those notions he does at least
as much harm as he does good.
It’s something I’ve only recently
come to realize myself, and I
hope that realization will keep
me far away from such situations
in the future.



***

Now, some real answers. My

semester is going well. My three
classes are some of the best I’ve

ever taken, and I’m having fun trying to make the most of
my remaining time on campus. I’m shooting for a job in D.C.
after graduation; our world is an unjust and scary one, and I
think I can do something about that. And I would say to the
last question that I wouldn’t want to pick a fictional char-
acter. As fantastic as they are, these people don’t exist, and
their worlds are fascinating without my being in them.

I have definitely evolved over the last four years. I have

changed and been re-formed in ways that touch my soul.

But I still catch myself thinking about that Iron Man

suit. I’m somehow compelled to see myself inside it. I can-
not resist the imagery of using some great creation of mine
to create change, a creation that draws its power from the
heart of me.

I know now that when I act on this temptation, I am obli-

gated to use great care. I know also that this obligation is a
weighty thing.

But I will shoulder it anyways. I will try through what I

do to give back; to shine some small light into the shadowed
corners of the world in which I live.

ILLUSTRATION BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND