Personal Life Essay

Anton Svirskiy

Class of 2019

Ms. Scipione/ Mr. Curatola

I was born in Ukraine. Ukraine is very young country, and it is only 26 years young as of this date. I studied a lot and was at the highest level possible, and I was a in the center of activity in my school. Only 500 people went to my school, and we only had 13 teachers in the building. The infrastructure and education are on an extremely poor level because it is not developed enough yet. All this time I went to middle school, I was the president of the class. You can be a president every year, only if enough teachers and students vote for you. At high school and middle school I always had a desire to help other people and bring our school so fame, so other kids and teachers would have wanted to work, and stay at that school. Our school had some Olympic medalists who I always looked up to. I was a very active kid, and my parents got me into diving when I was 4 years old. My biggest dream was to become an Olympic gold medalist when I grew up. This dream isn’t dead yet, even though I can’t dive at the professional level as I used to. When I was only 8 years old, I was competing against guys who were a lot older as me. I had achieved a couple of awards such as becoming a Champion of Ukraine and International Champion multiple times in diving.         

My life has changed after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014th. It wasn’t as bad in the beginning as it was a year later. Ukrainian infrastructure fell down even more, and let’s say “Great Depression” started. Once, my family and I were on our backyard, and we saw explosions                                                                                                                                                  near our town. After my parents saw that, they decided to leave the country to save our lives. Fortunately for us, we had an opportunity to move to the United States, until it wasn’t late for us to do so. When we got here, we didn’t speak English at all. I wanted to keep diving at the professional level for the United States and maybe make a name for myself. We moved to the United States in November 2015. Unfortunately I couldn’t keep doing what I had already started because my family just simply couldn’t afford it. I wanted to become a champion of the United States, and later on represent it at the Olympic Games. I know I could’ve gotten there, but I didn’t have an opportunity like this. But life moves on but i didn't give up on myself and I found a lot of new different things that I never even thought existed, because sports in Ukraine differ so much from what sports are in  the United States, and it just took my heart completely. Yes, education here is on a completely different level, and I saw how different it was. I like it here a lot more than in the Ukraine. Here in the United States everyone can show what they are capable of as an individual and do what you like to do, what you passionate about, and what you live by, unlike in the Ukraine. As for me, my favorite subjects are: math, chemistry, biology, English and world language. When I came here I didn’t speak any English and my first school year as a freshman in highschool in the 2015-2016 school year I had to take EnglishSecondLanguage course instead of regular English class because I didn’t speak even a tiny bit of English. The school year was really tough for me, and I remember that I literally didn’t understand a word my teachers said, but I still was getting straight A’s and getting a GPA of 93.5 at the end of the school year. My second school year was a little bit easier, because I already had adjusted to what the school day was like in the American school. My second school year I still had to take the ESL for the first half of the school year, and fortunately I got transferred to the regular English class in the middle of the year which never happened before. It was a huge achievement for me. It felt great becoming almost fluent in English in only one year. It took a lot of effort but I never gave up and kept pushing forward. I finished that year with a 95.4 GPA.         

It’s all about how bad you want it. I knew I had to take advantage of the free education and free athletics, so I started pushing myself as hard as you can imagine every single day in these two most important aspects of my life. It took me one year to learn English completely and in athletics I went from being a 120-pound skinny kid with 12% of body fat and 40 pounds of muscle to 175-pound grown man with 5% of body fat and  90 pounds of muscle. The transformation was incredible both mentally and physically. People hardly believe it’s possible naturally. I’m very thankful for being given an opportunity to be a three-sport student athlete, and it really helped me to get where I am at now, but I also feel like I’m self made. I don’t want to stop. I want to improve every single day. I want to set a lot of school records that will be unbeatable for decades. The two records i have a very good chance of beating in the next two years of my highschool career are the 50M Freestyle with a time of 22:50 seconds which was set in 2003, which has been pushing me forward since I got here, and second one is the 13.5ft for pole vaulting. I’m very competitive and a tough young man. I want to be remembered for doing good things for my community, and I am trying to bring fame to my school, to make it more popular and maybe even go worldwide. This school has been giving me a lot of opportunities, and I want to pay it back by making other kids want to go to this school. Hopefully someone will get inspired by me and what a great life story I have. Maybe it will inspire someone to keep pushing forward and never give up just as I got inspired by other people’s stories. My other big dream is to play division one football, but it’s really far from me for now, but I refuse to give it up and I believe that it’s still achievable. If football somehow doesn’t work out, I’m always still getting better in school and learning new stuff everyday. I’m also staying up all night studying because I understand that you have to take advantage of the opportunities you are given. My goal is to motivate people as much as I can to be the best version of myself, and there is always space to improve no matter how good you are. I’m thankful for the opportunities I have been given, and I feel like I can be helpful to American society and become an influential person in near future. I want to make an impact, and I have the work ethic for it. I'm very thankful to my family by giving me this amazing opportunity, and always staying strong. Also, by refusing to give up they gave me a better life. The life you only could ask for. I'm also thankful to be coached and taught by the such a professionals, who put so much effort in kids, and always strive for the best of their abilities to see you succeed. They also helped me reveal my talents, always supported and helped me when I needed it. By virtue of their effort, I'm capable of doing a lot of different things in different aspects of life. I'll never forget it, and I'll always be thankful to them. It’s ben an amazing journey and I'll keep doing what I'm doing, and will keep improving every single day no matter what obstacles I will have to face in my life.