smileylover3000
Jan 23, 2011
Undergraduate / "To keep or not keep?" common app essay question (a significant experience) [4]
Hello, this is my first thread posted. I would like if someone could look at my essay and provide me some much needed feedback. Thank you very much. :)
Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
"What should I do with it?" my eyes growing wild as anxiety and terror flooded me.
"Keep it! No one will know!" my friends chanted, whispering excitedly at my discovery.
The twenty dollar bill burned in my hand. I couldn't keep this. Maybe if it was just a dollar or a quarter then it wouldn't be that horrendous, but an entire twenty dollars wouldn't be morally right.
What should I have done? All my life, my mother had told me that I needed to do the right thing, no matter if it went against everyone else. And for most of my life, I had done just that. I avoided the parties that I knew would have alcohol at them and avoided dramatic situations. I tried to be the moral voice of reason in my friend's lives. So what would my mother say now that my brain really had wanted to keep this twenty?
I stepped away from my friend's declaration to keep the money. The person who lost this money clearly didn't know it fell out of their pockets and if I went and made an announcement some dishonest person would come and try to claim the money. I sighed heavily, rubbing my forehead. I placed the money in my pocket and warily went to my counselor asking for advice.
My counselor laughed at my conflict and suggested that perhaps I just give the money to charity. I slapped my forehead. Of course I could give it to charity! I got up and thanked him. As I left, I realized that life hands us the strangest situations that have so many paths. How we handled them however, is what truly defines our character. I could have easily kept the money and no would be the wiser, but what would that have said about me as person? Many of my friends had suggested I should have kept the money and if I had listened to them that would suggest that my personality is defined by others and I lacked the confidence in making my own decisions. But I knew that I was completely the opposite of those things; I was a person who radiated self-confidence and tried to always do the right thing even if it displeased the others around me.
When I placed the money in the drop box at the Humane Society, Robert Frost's poem The Road Less Traveled By and realized how perfectly they seemed to fit this situation. "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
Hello, this is my first thread posted. I would like if someone could look at my essay and provide me some much needed feedback. Thank you very much. :)
Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
"What should I do with it?" my eyes growing wild as anxiety and terror flooded me.
"Keep it! No one will know!" my friends chanted, whispering excitedly at my discovery.
The twenty dollar bill burned in my hand. I couldn't keep this. Maybe if it was just a dollar or a quarter then it wouldn't be that horrendous, but an entire twenty dollars wouldn't be morally right.
What should I have done? All my life, my mother had told me that I needed to do the right thing, no matter if it went against everyone else. And for most of my life, I had done just that. I avoided the parties that I knew would have alcohol at them and avoided dramatic situations. I tried to be the moral voice of reason in my friend's lives. So what would my mother say now that my brain really had wanted to keep this twenty?
I stepped away from my friend's declaration to keep the money. The person who lost this money clearly didn't know it fell out of their pockets and if I went and made an announcement some dishonest person would come and try to claim the money. I sighed heavily, rubbing my forehead. I placed the money in my pocket and warily went to my counselor asking for advice.
My counselor laughed at my conflict and suggested that perhaps I just give the money to charity. I slapped my forehead. Of course I could give it to charity! I got up and thanked him. As I left, I realized that life hands us the strangest situations that have so many paths. How we handled them however, is what truly defines our character. I could have easily kept the money and no would be the wiser, but what would that have said about me as person? Many of my friends had suggested I should have kept the money and if I had listened to them that would suggest that my personality is defined by others and I lacked the confidence in making my own decisions. But I knew that I was completely the opposite of those things; I was a person who radiated self-confidence and tried to always do the right thing even if it displeased the others around me.
When I placed the money in the drop box at the Humane Society, Robert Frost's poem The Road Less Traveled By and realized how perfectly they seemed to fit this situation. "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."