Where will you go if you had a ticket? - Prompt C for Texas Apply Universities

ticket back to childhood

In my mind, the concept of freedom changes as we grow up. During childhood, we have a freedom from responsibility, and as we mature into adults, we have freedom from dependency - we can make our own choices. Before I grow up to be a self-sustaining woman, I would love to use my ticket to go back in time to my childhood...

There was pin drop silence in the middle of the hot summer night. All the adults - my parents, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents - were asleep in my house.

I was lodged under one of my aunt's arms in a tight embrace. I slipped through her grasp unnoticed, while replacing myself with a four-feet-tall fuzzy blue stuffed bear. Then, I tiptoed to the top of the staircase and opened the door to the expansive terrace where my cousins were waiting for me for a night of fun.

We watched several movies on our laptop, ate cartons of ice cream, drank soda from the two-liter bottles, and played multiple board games. In the end, exhausted, we laid down on top of the roof and looked up at the clear sky with the twinkling stars. I felt the humid air around me, the hard ground beneath me, and the trickles of sweat on my forehead. That is when I realized how beautiful the moment was, how free I felt in that instant, and how much freedom my parents had given me throughout my life - no chores, no work, no responsibility.

However, I knew that one day I will be faced with those challenges and when that day comes, I will be prepared. I will be creative, thoughtful, and open-minded while overcoming adversity and always be positive when confronted with hardships.

I will always be mindful of my surroundings and live in the present at every split second, cherishing each moment of my life - from my freedom during childhood to my independence in college.

Arushi, while this whimsical essay shows the reviewer something significant about your upbringing, I feel that the topic being discussed is shallow and not really strong. As the reviewer, I will want to read something in this essay that shows me about your mindset. Who are you? How do you deal with situations? If there was a mistake you had made in the past that this ticket will allow you to go back to and change, how would you change the actions you made then? The ticket you were given is your passport to a world of possibilities, both real and imagined. So take me to that place. Show me something unique about you as a person. I want to know who you are in a playful manner.

Maybe you would want to consider showing me a pivotal moment in time when you decided what your future will be so that I can understand why you chose to enroll in this major. Maybe you have an inspirational role mode who is no longer living who, through the magic of the ticket, you will be able to go back in time to visit and interact with. How do you imagine yourself learning from this person? Why would this meeting be all too important for you? There are so many places, timelines, and historic events that you can visit using this ticket. For me, it is such a waste to use it just to go back to a time in your childhood when nothing significant actually happened. Surely there must be something you would want to do in the past that would either describe who you are today, why you think the way you think today, or perhaps, how an event in your life, if executed differently, would have resulted in a totally different person or life for yourself at present.

I am not saying that your essay is bad. It is actually good. I just think the response could use a little more meat or importance. Right now, as far as I am concerned, the content is too trivial and will not hold its own when compared to some stronger response essays based on the same prompt from other applicants.