Undergraduate / 'nature verses nurture' - UC personal statement [5]

Describe the world you come from-for example, your family, community or school-and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.
If you could help give me some good pointers that would be great.

All throughout middle school and into high school we hear about nature verses nurture and we have different teachers tell us their different opinions all the time. I believe that although we may inherit different physical attributes from our parents that may make you more athletic or music oriented, but your interactions with your family, friends, and teachers are the ones who really shape your personality. Different interactions with people have helped me aspire to either be a psychologist or a teacher.

Family is by far the biggest factor in my personality. Family is everything, whether you consider your family to be mom and dad, relatives, friends, or a mentor, everyone has a family of some sort. My family consists of me, my mom, dad, and sister. Although we have a large extended family as well, I only see them at holidays and birthdays. The person that I am most like in my family is my mom. She has such a strong personality and is a very compassionate person. One of the biggest things that my mom always does is look for the good in people. The last two years my dad struggled a lot with addiction and it caused my parents to separate and even after everything that happened, my mom still got my dad to go to counseling and tried to help him overcome all of his problems. My mom's willingness to help my dad even after everything that had happened inspired me to possibly go into psychology.

In attempt to further explore psychology I decided to take social psychology this year with my teacher Mrs. Willems. That class is definitely one of my favorite classes. Taking this class has really intrigued me about the human mind and why we have the reactions that we do. During class we always have different activities like the selective attention test and every day I would come home and show my family the videos we watched and do some of the different experiments we did as well. I couldn't wait to tell my family about what I learned in that class.

Another teacher who has helped shaped my goals and aspirations is my fifth and seventh grade teacher, Miss. Canning. She was one of the few teachers that actually cared about her students and tried to make a difference in each of their lives both in an academic level and on a personal level. She made me actually enjoy school and is the one person who changed my opinion about teachers. She made me think about possibly becoming a teacher in the future.

My world around me has shaped me into the person I am today and has helped shape my dreams and aspirations dramatically. Without meeting different people in my life, my dreams would be completely different than what they are now. I am so glad I have had different experiences that have shaped my dreams for a career around either being a psychologist or a teacher, and I hope I continue to have more experiences and meet more people who will help me make the right decision on which career to choose.

Undergraduate / 'the first day of practice for the summer' - UC prompt#2 [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?

It was the first day of practice for the summer. We had just finished up our season of gymnastics and we were going to start learning our new routines for the next level. I was so proud of myself from the previous year because all of the routines just came so easy to me so I spent the entire year perfecting it for competition. After a year of doing the same routine over and over, I was ready to get a new routine. I knew this year was going to be a piece of cake just like last year.

When I got there I walked in with my head high with confidence unlike a lot of my team mates who were scared and nervous. After we warmed up we were going to start learning our new routines for all of the events. First we started on floor and beam; I thought they were going to be really easy because we were only learned the new dance moves. When my coach started teaching us the dance moves they were a little more complicated than I thought they would have been. As the time passed I thought I was going to be able to pull it all together but the routine just got harder and harder and I felt myself falling behind. I kept falling over or rolling my ankles and at one point I was about to give up. I tried to stick it out till we were done but we were not even close to being done with practice. Next we went to bars.

Bars was my favorite event and it always came easy to me so I thought for sure this would be better. At first I was surprised at how good I was starting off; but just like floor and beam it got complicated. It seemed so easy when some of the older girls did it but for some reason I just could not grasp anything. Every time I tried to do one of the new tricks I would fall and I tried over and over again but with no change. I was sore, sweaty, and covered in chalk; all I wanted to do was go home.

The next day was more of the same thing and it went on for a couple weeks. I still could not figure out what I was doing wrong. Finally I realized that not everything was just going to happen without giving all of my effort. I decided I was going to try to pay full attention to each trick and find a different way to do that trick that would actually work. The next day things started to improve a lot from before even though they were not even close to being perfect. I discovered that not everything will come easy to me so I need to work particularly hard at those things.

Now I am the type of person who will not give up on anything even if it seems impossible. I am proud that through this experience with gymnastics, I can now look at things differently in a better way. This reflects the person that I am because I pay attention to everything that I do but I work especially hard at the things that I find difficult.

its a little too long so any suggestions about how to make it shorter would be great!