To Kill A Mockingbird Essays: Social Media

Walking into class, I noticed my best friend wearing a pained expression on her face. She had been acting a little weird the last few weeks; instead of her usual bubbly self, she was zoning out during conversations and cancelling plans with “I don’t feel well” as an excuse. As I sat down thinking, “what’s wrong with her this time?” she whispered to me, “I have something I really need to tell you today.” Piecing together her distressed demeanor and her recent out-of-sorts behavior, I concluded that her boyfriend must have done something stupid again, or even maybe, they broke up. I was terribly wrong. While the rest of the class started discussing the latest chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird, she knelt down next to my desk and quietly wrote on the corner of my notebook: “I have leukemia.”
It felt as if someone pressed the mute button on my senses. The harmonies of my surroundings were sucked out of my ears. The vivid and colorful world became dim and gloomy. The candied life that I thought existed melted away and left a barren vacuum.
These past few weeks, I hadn’t make a single effort to figure out what was wrong, I was self-absorbed, selfish, narrow-minded.
I’d simply concluded that her moodiness was caused by trivial boy problems, assuming it was her own fault for dating that pinhead of a boy. No, I was the pinhead. My ignorance hit me hard in the stomach. I didn’t deserve to call myself her friend.
My senses eventually returned. But instead of the hearing the original harmonies, I heard ones that were slightly out of tune. Instead of seeing the same vibrant colors, I saw colors tinged with a darker undertone. Thing weren’t as perfect as they used to seem. Without knowing, I had developed this acute awareness of people around me and this insatiable desire to help others. Humans are fragile like snowflakes; anything could be happening to anyone at any moment, just like with my friend. What if the boy who sat next to me in Spanish class was only acting annoying to distract himself from thinking about his parents’ upcoming divorce? What if my neighbor was only acting rude because she had just found out her daughter was being bullied at school? My perception of my life changed completely. Instead of being the Sun with the rest of my universe revolving around me, I became the Earth, revolving my universe. Instead of being the constantly doted on “child,” I became the “parent” who made sure her kids collected the most rewarding experiences and memories.
Social media, my previous form of entertainment, became a tool to read news about global issues and the methods to solve them.
I joined more extracurriculars, not because I needed them for college apps, but because I wanted to start making a real change in the community. To encourage others to do the same, I became the president of National Honor Society by providing different volunteer opportunities to different people. Finding out my best friend was suffering from leukemia transformed me from an oblivious caterpillar into an attentive butterfly. It made me stronger morally, and developed in me an awareness of others’ situations. Most importantly, it led me to determine how I want to make a change in the world: by providing proper healthcare, provide clean water, and reduce poverty in impoverished
countries.