abutler5
Nov 5, 2009
Undergraduate / UC: How my father's mental illness cultivated my desire to be a psychologist [13]
This isn't quite completed. Words and phrases in parenthesis are things that I think I want to replace with different phrasing, either to be less awkward or less repetitive. My ending is also less polished than the rest of the essay, as I haven't done as much work on it. I also might want to shave off some words, possibly 50-100, because this word count is at 660. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
And, last question before I post the essay, is the spacing below correct for the UC applications? Or should I keep all of the paragraphs together with no line break in between, and use five spaces to indent the paragraphs?
Prompt 1: What is your intended major? Discuss how your interest in the subject developed and describe any experience you have had in the field - such as volunteer work, internships and employment, participation in student organizations and activities - and what you have gained from your involvement.
Several months after the first time I saw the homeless man wandering the streets in tattered clothes, I pulled up next to him in my car. He was standing at a stoplight, looking at the ground and muttering to himself. Desperate to reach out to him, I waited until he looked up from the ground, made eye contact with him, and waved. He looked back at me, but his glassy eyes never flashed with recognition. He was lost in the fog of his illness; he no longer recognized his own daughter.
Mental illness has affected my life more than most. Throughout my childhood, I watched my father suffer from both bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. I watched as these diseases tore a once charismatic, successful man apart, and how their effects on his personality and his actions devastated my entire family. I cried as I watched my father attempt to hang himself in our garage when I was ten. During one of his manic episodes, we dealt with the fallout after he squandered our entire savings on a single lost bet. I helped my two younger sisters pack their things after he sold our home because he was convinced that our neighbors were watching him. I witnessed his violent outbursts exacted on every member of our household, and felt the embarrassment of trying to conceal his violence so that our family could continue to hide his illness from everyone, including ourselves. All this while he started and stopped medicating on a whim, adamantly refusing therapy, desperately claiming "I'm not crazy."
I did not understand my father's illness, and after my parents' divorce when I was 18, we quickly drifted apart. It would not be until I began learning more about psychology that I would understand the scope of his disease, and come to terms with why he had lost control. It was devastating when I realized that instead of harboring his illness as our dark secret, if we, as a family, had opened ourselves to the possibility of family therapy, his illness may never have advanced as far as it did. My newfound knowledge soothed my anger and resentment towards my father. I felt compelled to reconnect with him and see if I could find a way to help him. Unfortunately, around this time I would learn, first through family friends, and, later, with my own eyes, that my father had already fallen apart. He, like so many others afflicted with schizophrenia, had become homeless.
It has been nearly a year since the last time I saw my father living on the street. I do not know if he is still homeless. I do not know if he has gotten help and started a new life. I do not know if he is still alive. I always reflect upon my encounter with him at the stoplight as a missed opportunity. As an adolescent, I would never have been able to comprehend that having a parent with a mental illness could have a modicum of positivity. However, the inability to help one person has filled me with the drive to help many people, a new predisposition to help those who are in need. More importantly, however, I would like to focus on how to bring care to those who will not seek it because they, like my father, refuse help on the basis of being labeled as "crazy." I want to aid in finding a way to remove the stigma from seeking treatment so that people like my father can receive the care they desperately need. My father's illness defined my past, made it negative and difficult, but it also drives my motivation to devote my future to helping others like him change their lives for the better.
Thanks, Dad. I love you.
This isn't quite completed. Words and phrases in parenthesis are things that I think I want to replace with different phrasing, either to be less awkward or less repetitive. My ending is also less polished than the rest of the essay, as I haven't done as much work on it. I also might want to shave off some words, possibly 50-100, because this word count is at 660. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
And, last question before I post the essay, is the spacing below correct for the UC applications? Or should I keep all of the paragraphs together with no line break in between, and use five spaces to indent the paragraphs?
Prompt 1: What is your intended major? Discuss how your interest in the subject developed and describe any experience you have had in the field - such as volunteer work, internships and employment, participation in student organizations and activities - and what you have gained from your involvement.
Several months after the first time I saw the homeless man wandering the streets in tattered clothes, I pulled up next to him in my car. He was standing at a stoplight, looking at the ground and muttering to himself. Desperate to reach out to him, I waited until he looked up from the ground, made eye contact with him, and waved. He looked back at me, but his glassy eyes never flashed with recognition. He was lost in the fog of his illness; he no longer recognized his own daughter.
Mental illness has affected my life more than most. Throughout my childhood, I watched my father suffer from both bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. I watched as these diseases tore a once charismatic, successful man apart, and how their effects on his personality and his actions devastated my entire family. I cried as I watched my father attempt to hang himself in our garage when I was ten. During one of his manic episodes, we dealt with the fallout after he squandered our entire savings on a single lost bet. I helped my two younger sisters pack their things after he sold our home because he was convinced that our neighbors were watching him. I witnessed his violent outbursts exacted on every member of our household, and felt the embarrassment of trying to conceal his violence so that our family could continue to hide his illness from everyone, including ourselves. All this while he started and stopped medicating on a whim, adamantly refusing therapy, desperately claiming "I'm not crazy."
I did not understand my father's illness, and after my parents' divorce when I was 18, we quickly drifted apart. It would not be until I began learning more about psychology that I would understand the scope of his disease, and come to terms with why he had lost control. It was devastating when I realized that instead of harboring his illness as our dark secret, if we, as a family, had opened ourselves to the possibility of family therapy, his illness may never have advanced as far as it did. My newfound knowledge soothed my anger and resentment towards my father. I felt compelled to reconnect with him and see if I could find a way to help him. Unfortunately, around this time I would learn, first through family friends, and, later, with my own eyes, that my father had already fallen apart. He, like so many others afflicted with schizophrenia, had become homeless.
It has been nearly a year since the last time I saw my father living on the street. I do not know if he is still homeless. I do not know if he has gotten help and started a new life. I do not know if he is still alive. I always reflect upon my encounter with him at the stoplight as a missed opportunity. As an adolescent, I would never have been able to comprehend that having a parent with a mental illness could have a modicum of positivity. However, the inability to help one person has filled me with the drive to help many people, a new predisposition to help those who are in need. More importantly, however, I would like to focus on how to bring care to those who will not seek it because they, like my father, refuse help on the basis of being labeled as "crazy." I want to aid in finding a way to remove the stigma from seeking treatment so that people like my father can receive the care they desperately need. My father's illness defined my past, made it negative and difficult, but it also drives my motivation to devote my future to helping others like him change their lives for the better.
Thanks, Dad. I love you.