Spot D ictation Bob Edwards: This is the time of year when high school seniors rush to the mailbox to find out which colleges have accepted them. One thing they’ll be judged on is their application essay, so Morning Edition asked students to share those essays.More than 150 students, parents,and teachers from around the country responded. Five were chosen for broadcast. There’ll be one each day this week. Richard Van Ornum of Cincinnati is first. Richard Van Ornum: When I was little, I dreamed I was flying . Each night, I was ___1___ in the air, though never over the same ___2___ . Sometimes in the __3__ of early morning, I would wake up thinking it was true and I’d ___4___ off my bed, expecting to soar out of the window. Of course, I always __ 5 __ , but not before remembering that I’d been dreaming. I would realize that no real person could fly and I’d ___6___ on the floor , crushed by the ___7___ of my own limitations. Eventually,my dreams of flying stopped. I think I stopped dreaming completely . After that,my earliest memory is of learning to count to 100. After baths, my mother would perch me on the sink and dry me, as I tried to __8__ to 100 without a mistake. I had to be lifted onto the sink. An __9__ with a runaway truck when I was four had mangled my left leg , leaving scars that __10____ , puckered white against my skin. Looking at the largest of my scars in the __11__ , I imagined that it was an eagle. It wasn’t fair, I thought, I had an eagle on my leg, but I couldn’t fly. I could hardly walk, and the crutches hurt my arms . Years later, in Venice, I had the __12__ thing to a revelation I can imagine. Sitting on the rooftop of the Cathedral of San Marco, I wasn’t sure what life had in store for me. I was up on a ledge in between the winged horses that __13__ San Marco square. To the left, the Grand Canal snaked off into the sea, where the sun cast long crimson __14__ across the city. Below me, in the square, pigeons swirled away from the children chasing them and swooped down onto a tourist who was __15__ dried corn. Somewhere in the square, a band was __16__ Frank Sinatra. It was Fly Me to the Moon, I think. Up on the roof of the cathedral, it seemed to me the pieces of my life suddenly fell together. I realized that everyone is born with gifts, but we all __17__ obstacles. If we recognize our talents and __18__ of them, we’ve got a fighting chance to overcome our obstacles and __19__ in life. I knew what my gifts were: __20__ and perseverance. And I also knew what my first obstacle had been: a runaway truck on a May morning ___21____ for preschoolers on a field trip. But I knew that the obstacles _22__ . They could be overcome. I was proof of that, walking. That night, for the first time in years, I dreamed I was flying. I soared __23__ the fields of Italy, through the __24__ winding streets of Venice and on beyond the Grand Canal, __25__ the reddening sun across the sea.