An Unlikely Response

Below is an excerpt from an essay I am writing for my Sociology class about my core values. I am posting this because I know many of you can relate to my sentiment.

One final factor to which I attribute many of my core values comes from a rather unlikely source. Like the marching band, it is one I was reluctant to accept at first. When they were first released, I dismissed the Harry Potter novels as just another fad, a trend that would soon fade away. I wouldn’t read them; I didn’t even like reading. After seeing the first film, my interest was peaked. I picked up the second book hoping to have it read by the time its film counterpart was released. By that time, I had read all of the published books and was in the process of rereading them. Never before had I been so taken by a series of books that I felt compelled to read them again. The Harry Potter books taught me that, though the odds might seem to be stacked against you, with courage and love and the support of friends, incredible things can happen. That message was beautifully illustrated in May of 2009 when I joined nearly one thousand fellow fans in Boston for LeakyCon, a Harry Potter convention whose sole function, unlike every other convention, was to raise funds for charity. At that conference, I came to know scores of amazing people, many of which have come to be close friends. While we came from all corners of the globe, from every conceivable background, it soon became clear that we shared in a common value, that of love and friendship and the desire to do good.

If I have learned anything in the brief time I have spent exploring this world it is that we are all pieces of a bigger picture, scattered across the globe. Everything we do, every interaction we make, changes the shape of our piece, affecting where and how it will find its fit. I believe that we are all searching for a place to fit our piece of the puzzle and can attest that it is an amazing feeling, whether it is in a marching band, or at a Harry Potter fan convention, when your piece finds its place.