Throughout my life, the only thing I've been successful in is failing. The most prominent example might be sports. I've played basketball since early elementary school (I'm deep into high school now) and never once have I been on a winning team. On my middle school team we played 22 games over the course of two season. We won three games. Volleyball was even worse. For starters, I was on a club team so my parents were paying for me to fail. For the two seasons I played with this volleyball team, we basically lost every game of every tournament (except one; yay!). I have never been great at sports, but I made sure to give it my all. I showed up to every practice and every game of each sport I played, even when things were happening at the same time. The basketball season for school overlapped with the club volleyball season, so often I would leave a painful basketball practice and eat a stale protein bar while driving to Durham for volleyball practice. The dedication I had to every activity I did was insane, and there was no reason to care that much about a cruddy sports team, but I did anyway. Of course, sports isn't the only aspect of life I've failed in. My mom introduced me and my siblings to the Doodle for Google contest in early elementary school and every year since I've made sure to submit something. Now this might come as a surprise, but I've never won. There are hundreds of thousands of submissions every year and if I'm being honest, my artistic skills are barely better than my athletic skills, so there's no reason to expect me to win. No matter how much effort or work I put into crafting the perfect illustration, I'm not going to win. Still, every year I eagerly await the new prompt that gets released each winter, and then I try my best to create a perfect drawing. Can I at least get an A for effort? Now maybe you're thinking "if you're not good at sports or art, maybe you're good at music?" That would be a fair question. I'll at least say that my music skills are tremendously stronger than my athletic or artistic ones. Still, they're not great. I had an amazing band teacher in middle school and he encouraged everyone to try out for local music competitions, and I did. For these auditions I had to play scales, a prepared piece, and some sight-reading. For jazz auditions I also had to improv over specific chord changes. I practiced and practiced for months leading up to the auditions. My saxophone teacher would help me, providing tips and feedback after hearing the same solo over and over again. I never made it into any music group I auditioned for, even the ones that were limited to just my county. I would watch the same people I was in band with excel and make it into these different musical groups while I was only involved with music at a school level. That last essay I posted (the one about pancakes) was written with the sole purpose of entering the essay contest on this site. I referred back to notes I had taken about essay structure throughout the school year last year. I made an outline first and then filled it in with explanation, all on a separate document. I made sure not to use contractions in my essay because that wouldn't be proper grammar for that style of writing. I carefully watched the character count and once I had gotten it down to exactly 5,000 I pasted the essay into the upload box and posted it. Now is that essay going to win the contest? I'd be willing to bet a large sum of money that it won't. It doesn't matter how late I stayed up working on it or how much time I invested in the idea, if it's not good enough, it's not good enough, and this experience will just be yet another fail to add to my resume. Now there's a lot more I could talk about. I could explain how I've failed at making friends after cutting everyone off my freshman year of high school. I could explain how I've failed at various cooking competitions I've entered. I could explain how I every year I snag a minor role in my church musical but fail to actually sound good while singing. Alas, I do not have the time or characters to go into all of that. Instead, you'll just have to marvel over the fails I've shared with you and reflect on your own.

Pancakes are a breakfast classic, enjoyed with a nice pat of butter and warm maple syrup. For the past sixteen years, I have made classic blueberry pancakes with my dad, crispy Bisquick pancakes with my grandpa, crepes with my mom, and even created my own pancake masterpieces. As I have changed and grown throughout my life, the pancakes around me have done the same. Some of my earliest memories are of making pancakes. As a child, I would wake my dad up and pull him downstairs. After feeding our dog we would get to work, throwing flour, butter, eggs, milk, all the necessary ingredients into a bowl. I could never mix the batter for long before my hand would cramp, so I sat on the counter and watched my dad do the work. My job was pouring in the frozen blueberries. They would swirl around, making the batter indigo. After my dad had thoroughly mixed the batter, we would scoop it out onto the griddle, let it sizzle, and then flip the finished pancakes onto a plate. These Saturday mornings spent mixing pancake batter are some of the fondest memories of my childhood. My dad was not the only person I made pancakes with. Once a month I would spend the night at my grandparents' house and when I woke up in the morning we would always make pancakes. My grandpa would measure out the Bisquick powder and stir in the other ingredients while I sat on a tall chair watching. He then poured the batter into perfect circles and pressed dried cranberries into the top of each pancake. This sour and sweet combination along with the crispy texture always hit my taste buds just right. After all the pancakes had been cooked, we would head to the back porch. My grandma poured Aunt Jemima's syrup all over hers but I thought they were perfect without anything. These simple cranberry pancakes remain my favorite; Ever since my grandpa died four years ago, no pancake has ever tasted as good. My mom and I also share pancake memories. We always made crepes. Crepes were not a weekly or monthly appearance in our house, instead they were a special treat. The batter is not too hard to make, it is easily whipped up in a blender. The mixture is supposed to rest overnight, but more often than not we neglected that step out of laziness. The hard part is the cooking. The pan has to be just the right temperature to fully cook the batter and create crispy edges. When flipping each crepe you have to be gentle, making sure not to tear it. For most of my childhood I watched my mom flip crepes, marveling at her talent and eating them fresh out of the pan with sugar and lemon juice. Eventually, I would be able to make my own crepes. At some point in my childhood, my parents made a decision that we needed to eat healthier. Out with cow milk, in with almond milk. Out with rice, in with quinoa. We still had pancakes, but they were never the same. Instead of following the pancake recipe in the Joy of Cooking, my parents found recipes on mommy blogger websites. Now when we make pancakes the ingredients include whole wheat flour and chia seeds. As much as I miss the old pancakes, I am happy when we have our new version. I know that eating healthy is a smart decision. Even if our pancakes taste like cardboard now, at least I can be healthy and strong in the future. As I grew up, I mastered the art of making pancakes and crepes. For my sister's birthday I made a rainbow crepe cake with four dozen crepes. I made them without tearing any. Whenever we have breakfast for dinner, I volunteer to cook pancakes, still admiring the indigo batter. All the skills I have came from watching those I love. If my dad had not spent countless hours whipping up pancakes with me, I would be hopeless when it comes to making them now. If my grandpa had not opened my eyes to interesting flavor combinations, I would still accept blueberry as the superior flavor. If my mom had not demonstrated how to flip a crepe, I would not be able to make them as effortlessly as I do now. My family members are not the only ones I enjoy pancakes with. A couple years ago, I took my friends to IHOP before we went to a concert. My friends laughed at me when I ordered pancakes à la mode for dinner and I laughed back when they chose to get granola pancakes. After ordering we messed around with all the syrup bottles on the table, opening and closing them to look like mouths. The pancakes seemed even better than usual that night. This was not the best period of my life, but getting to smile and talk with my friends over pancakes made at least one night a whole lot better. Throughout my life the pancakes I enjoy have developed from simple blueberry pancakes to extravagant crepe cakes stacking up to the ceiling and I myself have gone through such changes as well. I have enjoyed making and eating pancakes with all my family members and friends. They have helped develop my tastes and cooking skills tremendously. I have had amazing conversations over pancake batter. I cannot wait to see where pancakes take me next.