This past semester in English 11, Mrs. Dani DeJong shared a collection of essays from National Public Radio’s program, “This I Believe.” She then challenged her students to write their own personal credo about a core principle that defines their life. The array of topics, concerns, and passions were as diverse as the students themselves.

The ACS Inside Out blog is excited to present their essays in our 2017 summer blog series, “This I Believe: Eight Personal Credos by Eight ACS Students.”

PART FOUR: Appreciate Your Scars
By Stephanie Klassen

When I was younger, I was a bit of a daredevil.

The playground of my elementary school had a tall, rusty, crusty, falling apart, metal slide. Instead of having dirt or bark mulch throughout the playground, my school decided to have rocks. They weren’t sharp rocks, however, they were round, small and grey.

One sunny day, I decided that I would invent a new way of going down the slide. That’s right, I was going to go down the slide on my stomach.

I climbed up the ladder and onto the wooden platform, my classmates looking at me with new found respect. I lay down, pushed off and went flying. My speed picked up so fast I must’ve looked like some sort of super child. When the end of the slide came, I did not slow down. I skid through the rocks hands and face first for about 5 feet leaving a trail of dust and flying rocks behind me. Luckily, my left hand took most of the fall but I ended up shredding open the knuckle on my pinky.

To this day, I still have a scar on my hand and I couldn’t be more proud of it.

I thoroughly enjoy telling the story of how I got my scar and it wasn’t until I was recently telling it that something clicked in my mind.

Our whole lives are made up of stories.

As we live out our lives and make memories, our memories become stories that we tell to describe ourselves. Whenever I tell the story of how I got my scar, people give me a weird look. They look at me as if I am naive for being so proud of it. They hide their judgement behind a smile and a laugh, but their eyes question me and say, “Why are you so happy about something that you should be embarrassed about?” It baffles me to think that people are ashamed of their scars; the scars are just a physical representations of our stories.

If we are so proud of telling our stories, why should we be ashamed if the stories are shown upon our skin?

Although the scars may change our appearance, they can only add to our beauty.

I believe that scars are beautiful.