off_beatninja07
Nov 30, 2009
Undergraduate / UC Prompt 2- "Challenge" [4]
I feel like my ideas on this essay are too scattered. Its 2 words away from 750, and I know that I need to cut back on unecessary sentences and details (not sure which). Any corrections and feedback will do as of this moment, please HELP!!!
PROMPT 2:Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud, and how does it relate to the person you are?
I am always up for a challenge. As far as I can remember, I have always been the competitive one in the family. Mom often brought up stories of how my siblings and I constantly turned every single family get-together into a competition when we were young. My favorite of the stories were about the spaghetti -slurping contests at the dinner table. Every time Mom cooked up a hefty load of noodles and sauce for supper, my five brothers and I positioned our utensils and plates in a ready manner which then followed the epic western stare-down. Just as the clock struck noon, at the instant the batch of spaghetti hit our plates, we immediately drew our forks and started slurping, shoving down mouthfuls of pasta until the first one with the empty plate was declared victorious. Despite the fact that it occasionally concluded in sauce-stained faces and red spatters on shirts, I always ended up the winner. Being a creature of habit, I carried such a fascination to confront every challenge for the upcoming years of my life, no matter how silly. But little did I know that a new challenge was to confront me; one that would be one of the most significantly difficult challenge of my life--MESA club.
That challenge had arrived in between the sophomore and junior year of high school. I had joined the Math, Engineering, Science, and Achievement Program (also known as MESA club) off-track in the interests of meeting up with fellow classmates and adding on to my lists of extracurricular activities during vacation. Rony, Alex, and Sam, who were present members, had formed a team. After hearing recently of my association, they had eagerly invited me to be their fourth member. Right after making a momentous decision, we had immediately began what would become a prolonged devotion to create various mechanically-intricate projects that would be entered into competitions with high hopes of winning for the honor of the school, and the reputation to become the best.
The first of the competitions, the in-house trebuchet competition, became the catalyst of our upcoming success. After winning first place at the in-house, we were driven anxious to win one competition after the next. What at first was a leisure turned into an obsession. We spent lengthy hours at school fixing malfunctions with our trebuchet and sleepless nights at each others homes reviewing and re-editing technical papers to present to the judges at the day of the competition. This carried on through the entry of our eleventh year in which it turned into a complicated balancing act of grueling lectures, tough class assignments, important exams, and even social life in between all the daily team meetings. In the months that followed, it had grown to be physically and emotionally difficult for me to keep up with both my commitment with MESA and my responsibilities of school. In a moment that I had realized this, I had broken down, and for the first time ever, I felt like giving up the challenge. But, I had not lost hope. All along, Rony, Alex, and Sam suffered similar struggles that I had been confronting. So instead of facing the struggles as individuals, we worked together to hurdle these obstacles; the team effort. Gradually, our spirits regained and our sanity returned in time for the regional district competition.
Although the result of the regional districts did not qualify us to the state rounds, Rony, Alex, Sam, and I were still proud to have exceeded such an accomplishment. The overall experiences had completely enlightened me with a new definition of challenge much different from what I had known previous to MESA. It taught me that a challenge does not always come in a platter of fun, but instead in a club of realism. It has also taught me that challenge can turn into a struggle far too great to conquer alone, and often, it takes a team to compete and overcome. Challenge has remarkably shaped my understanding of not giving in to weaknesses, but instead, reinforce its strengths and use it as a determination.
My mom and I had recently driven to my old school to reunite with the team that has long retired since the last competition. We all had given thoughts and words of what will be the next big challenge that we will face; and in unison, one thing came to our minds--college. My answer to that, "I am always up for a challenge."
I feel like my ideas on this essay are too scattered. Its 2 words away from 750, and I know that I need to cut back on unecessary sentences and details (not sure which). Any corrections and feedback will do as of this moment, please HELP!!!
PROMPT 2:Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud, and how does it relate to the person you are?
I am always up for a challenge. As far as I can remember, I have always been the competitive one in the family. Mom often brought up stories of how my siblings and I constantly turned every single family get-together into a competition when we were young. My favorite of the stories were about the spaghetti -slurping contests at the dinner table. Every time Mom cooked up a hefty load of noodles and sauce for supper, my five brothers and I positioned our utensils and plates in a ready manner which then followed the epic western stare-down. Just as the clock struck noon, at the instant the batch of spaghetti hit our plates, we immediately drew our forks and started slurping, shoving down mouthfuls of pasta until the first one with the empty plate was declared victorious. Despite the fact that it occasionally concluded in sauce-stained faces and red spatters on shirts, I always ended up the winner. Being a creature of habit, I carried such a fascination to confront every challenge for the upcoming years of my life, no matter how silly. But little did I know that a new challenge was to confront me; one that would be one of the most significantly difficult challenge of my life--MESA club.
That challenge had arrived in between the sophomore and junior year of high school. I had joined the Math, Engineering, Science, and Achievement Program (also known as MESA club) off-track in the interests of meeting up with fellow classmates and adding on to my lists of extracurricular activities during vacation. Rony, Alex, and Sam, who were present members, had formed a team. After hearing recently of my association, they had eagerly invited me to be their fourth member. Right after making a momentous decision, we had immediately began what would become a prolonged devotion to create various mechanically-intricate projects that would be entered into competitions with high hopes of winning for the honor of the school, and the reputation to become the best.
The first of the competitions, the in-house trebuchet competition, became the catalyst of our upcoming success. After winning first place at the in-house, we were driven anxious to win one competition after the next. What at first was a leisure turned into an obsession. We spent lengthy hours at school fixing malfunctions with our trebuchet and sleepless nights at each others homes reviewing and re-editing technical papers to present to the judges at the day of the competition. This carried on through the entry of our eleventh year in which it turned into a complicated balancing act of grueling lectures, tough class assignments, important exams, and even social life in between all the daily team meetings. In the months that followed, it had grown to be physically and emotionally difficult for me to keep up with both my commitment with MESA and my responsibilities of school. In a moment that I had realized this, I had broken down, and for the first time ever, I felt like giving up the challenge. But, I had not lost hope. All along, Rony, Alex, and Sam suffered similar struggles that I had been confronting. So instead of facing the struggles as individuals, we worked together to hurdle these obstacles; the team effort. Gradually, our spirits regained and our sanity returned in time for the regional district competition.
Although the result of the regional districts did not qualify us to the state rounds, Rony, Alex, Sam, and I were still proud to have exceeded such an accomplishment. The overall experiences had completely enlightened me with a new definition of challenge much different from what I had known previous to MESA. It taught me that a challenge does not always come in a platter of fun, but instead in a club of realism. It has also taught me that challenge can turn into a struggle far too great to conquer alone, and often, it takes a team to compete and overcome. Challenge has remarkably shaped my understanding of not giving in to weaknesses, but instead, reinforce its strengths and use it as a determination.
My mom and I had recently driven to my old school to reunite with the team that has long retired since the last competition. We all had given thoughts and words of what will be the next big challenge that we will face; and in unison, one thing came to our minds--college. My answer to that, "I am always up for a challenge."
