Undergraduate / My years in Dubai, Stanford Supplement Short Essays - intellectually engaging [7]

Please, please, help me with my essay. I struggled with the topic, but I finally decided on doing it about my time in Dubai. I think it needs more details, that I need to explain why it taught me that sometimes bad things happen to help you become better, but I am not sure, and it is already 248 words.

Thank you so much!!

Stanford students are widely known to possess a sense of intellectual vitality. Tell us about an idea or an experience you have had that you find intellectually engaging.

I was twelve when I moved to Dubai.
When you ask people that have only heard of Dubai, or visited during vacations, to describe it in one word or sentence, you get wonderful things such as: Paradise, ostentatious, beckoning, or "Better than anywhere else".

I was one of those people.
My first sight of Dubai was from a plane, it was shiny, full of life and colors, and that impressed my 12 years old self, I wanted to love it, so I decided to love it.

When you ask people that live in Dubai to describe Dubai, you get: "We don't care and we don't even care that we don't care", "The city without a soul" and "Fake city, fake people".

Dramatic, don't you think? But right, to a certain point.
My years in Dubai have taught me a lot of things, things that at 15 I shouldn't know, but am happy to.
Dubai taught me the difference between what you see and what is; it taught me that sometimes people's kindness is the only thing that will keep you afloat, while others people will be cruel just because they can be.

I learned things during those years that shaped me into who I am today, I like to take as much from my surroundings as I can and I believe that had I stayed in Spain, today, I would be someone else.

But more importantly Dubai taught me that sometimes bad things happen to bring better things into your life.
Coming to Dubai has made me go through some pretty bad things, made me witness some pretty bad sights, made me learn of a world my brain would still be unaware of had I not been here.

Coming to Dubai made me learn about pain, but also made me be someone better, a bad thing which brought a good one. A lot of times my sister and I look back to what our life was, and we wonder what would have been of us had we not come here, we become nostalgic and wish with all we have that we had not, but if I have the chance of going to Stanford it will be worth it, if the end of this dark tunnel is Stanford, then I will go through it again even if I had the opportunity of choosing not to.

Undergraduate / The name recognition, the diversity, the location, or the weather - Why Stanford [6]

Help please! I think that maybe it's too cliché, but it's the truth. Should I mention here what I could bring to Stanford, or in another essay? If in another one, which one?

Please me completly honest, blunt even, I really want to improve!!

Thank you!!

Tell us what makes Stanford a good place for you.

Stanford is the school I want to go to, it's the only one that makes me feel as if I could belong, which really matters to me as I haven't felt like I belong for so long, it is where I see myself in one year, when I close my eyes and imagine myself in other schools it just doesn't fit.

When I first started looking at Stanford, I spent a lot of time in the website and fell in love with everything, the gorgeous campus, the beautiful environment, the atmosphere I sense when I read about it in your website and in others.

What made me want to go there is not the name recognition, the diversity, the location, or the weather. The fact that it has the best Psychology Program in the States and the knowledge that it will provide me with a great education helped, but what made me choose Stanford was the spirit I have read so much about. I know that if I am given the chance of going to Stanford that I will have a great experience, that the best four years of my life will be the ones I spend there.

It makes me smile when I read about the relax atmosphere, and the reference to ducks. I do not want to spend those four years in my room studying, I want to spend a part of them doing that, but another one out in the campus, doing crazy things I will remember fondly when I am old, I want to join the Leland Stanford Junior Marching Band, not to play the piano or any other instrument, but to be 'raucous and wild, colorful and a little bit crazy', like they are described, I will look forward to being a part of the Full Moon on the Quad if I am given the opportunity, I have never had someone to do crazy things with or even the opportunity of doing them, and maybe that is the reason I wholly adore the Assassins and Wacky Walk; those traditions make me yearn for Stanford, and I hope I am given the opportunity of looking forward to and being a part of them.