I can't pinpoint exactly when I first realized that I was special. It was certainly in early childhood, though an awareness of what, exactly, was special about me did not come until much later. Perhaps it was during games of hide and seek, for I had always known where everyone else was hiding. The other children would often ask how I had found them so quickly, and I usually shrugged, lacking an explanation I could put into words. I might say the knowledge simply appeared in my mind when I thought of where I should look, though this isn't quite right; it was not knowledge, more like a feeling, a foreboding of where I should go.
Over time, my talent grew; it took mostly the form of presentiments, of intuition that was unfailingly correct. I will tell you more, reader, at a later time; but for now, let me just say that I was full of hope when, at the tender age of sixteen standard years, I traveled to Dantooine, my parents having paid an arm and a leg for the ticket, and presented myself at the Jedi academy.
Imagine, then, my reaction when I was swiftly refused.
"Negligible," the master who examined me - a short, balding man with a harshly sloped nose, wearing a robe that looked too big for him - had said. I had failed the usual exercises, something to do with levitation and telekenesis. "You do have some force affinity, it's true. But had I walked by you on the promenade I never would have noticed; I had to look deep within you to see it at all. You do not have enough to be a Jedi."
I tried to tell him about the things I could do, but he dismissed it all as mere superstition. It was plain he did not believe me. In the end, he advised me to make a living somewhere as a farmer, a merchant, or in some profession that does not rely on the force.
I now think it was fine advice, and perhaps I would have been much happier had I followed it. Hotheaded youth that I was, I boarded a ship heading to the vicinity of Korriban that same day.