When this happened, I always tried to be optimistic and come out of this injury with more than I came in with. By not playing soccer for a year, I gained so much knowledge about myself just by writing in a journal that I still keep in my home. I read it from time to time and can still see the progression of my writing from when I started writing, to the last entry in that journal. This part of my life has been helpful because I can now write at a college level. Before I tore my ACL I couldn't write to save my life. I was a horrible writer and thanks to tearing my ACL I have improved dramatically. If this part of my life didn't happen, I would probably go to the University of Hawaii at Manoa with the rest of my classmates because that's what our education made us do..