An application for a class: In a paragraph, provide memorable insight into your life that is not addressed in a resume.

My approach to life can be described by my approach to bridge jumping. Take the Dorset Avenue Bridge, for example, from which I jumped in the summer of 2007. There were 20 minutes left in the Longport Beach Patrol scavenger hunt, and the last item on our list was: Jump off a bridge. Photo mid-air required. 12 points. Our group knew everyone else would drive to the mini-golf course in Margate and take a picture on the tiny bridge over a pond on the eighth hole.

There were no extra points for jumping off Dorset, which arches over a winding lagoon in Ventnor Heights, a neighborhood just outside of Atlantic City, N.J. But it didn’t matter. We headed to Dorset. My blood pulsed with pride and competiveness and a boldness that tends to emerge when I want to be perceived as brave. I knew then that I would jump. I hopped up onto the rail, slipped my shirt up over my head and handed my shorts to a friend.

I wanted to let go, without pausing, and disappear into the blackness below. But the water looked shallow from my perch. I envisioned a messy death.

So I ran down the bridge, jumped onto a stranger’s dock and quickly lowered myself into the water to test the depths of where I would land. Satisfied with the water level, I climbed back up the dock and up the side of the bridge to the top.

Only then did I laugh and let myself plummet into that dark water.