Undergraduate / Speaking Through Walls - Harvard Essay [4]

Can you guys tell me what you think of my harvard common app essay about challenges in my life? Feel free to offer corrections
Speaking Through Walls

When I was six years old I began to realize that something was not quite right with the way that I spoke. Sometimes when I talked an invisible wall would appear out of nowhere and stop all sound from escaping, leaving me totally incapable of saying what I needed to say. It seemed that no force could break this impenetrable wall and the only remedy for stopping its creation was total luck. Now, even at seventeen years of age, my body still chooses to build these walls that speech therapists call "blocks" and I still have problems breaking them down.

However, something came along that I could have never expected. Three years ago I fell in love with Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, and being languages they obviously heavily rely on the speaking portion. Nevertheless, I carried on with ignorance to the problems that could possibly occur whenever I speak to a native speaker or attempt to have a simple conversation. There was always the fear that the words would simply not break through the wall and I would leave someone with the impression that my speaking was elementary at best. Today, I am able to look back at those times and laugh at my uncertainty. Not only am I the top of my class and have become fluent in Spanish in less than three years, but I am also an incessant talker. Every time I see someone that I know speaks Spanish or Chinese I immediately strike up a conversation with them in their native tongue. My speech has brought numerous translation and teaching opportunities to me and I have had the privilege of making amazing friends that I would never have been able to make without knowledge of foreign languages.

Does this mean that my walls don't exist anymore? Absolutely not. Sometimes when I speak Spanish or Chinese I still become completely stuck in my words and no sound will come out. However, I have learned something immensely valuable from studying languages. The walls that we create in life, for me my fear of speaking and looking crazy, are only as big as we make them. While I still am forced to fight these walls, they have become seemingly paper thin and are broken down by simple acceptance and blind perseverance towards an unknown and often surprising future of great success.

Undergraduate / Should I include this for MIT? [3]

There's an additional info section for MIT and I was thinking about writing something. THis is what I came up with. should i include the writing, leave it out, or write about something else? is the additional info section even meant for this purpose?

Tryouts for my school's soccer team are only twenty days away and my practice schedule has been vigorous to say the least. Every day I run and practice dribbling, shooting, juggling, and passing drills to help better my game. However, if someone would have asked me about playing and training for soccer ten months ago I would have been in utter disbelief. That's because ten months ago my body was nearly twice as big, I was obese by nearly forty pounds, and my health was declining rapidly.

My journey began in a doctor's waiting room. The usual waiting had already come to pass and at last the doctor entered the room. Little did I know his news would change my entire life. He strictly informed me that my liver was not functioning properly due to my weight and that I weighed far too much for my height and age. If I ever wanted to live a long and healthy life, something would have to change.

To say that his news was daunting is an understatement. I had already tried numerous times to lose the weight but it simply never worked. My body just didn't seem programmed to keep off the pounds. However, I knew that if something didn't change I would never be able to experience the things in life I love like playing soccer or hiking for miles in the misty mountains of China or even live to see the fulfillment of my life, so I began to run.

Everyday after school I would come home and gear up for my daily run around the neighborhood. At first my distances were small. I would barely make five-hundred feet at a slow jog but before I knew it I was running nearly five kilometers every day. With the running came a drastic change in my body. The weight seemed to disappear into thin air. I felt like every stride I took in my running shoes was a step that burned the barriers in life that my excess weight had created.

Ten months later and the changes are remarkable. I've lost nearly ninety pounds since I began running in February and many new opportunities have become available. Now that I could run much more, I was able to begin playing soccer with some people I knew from my school and I learned that I love the game. My weight loss has enabled me to make numerous new friends that I would never have been able to meet outside of a soccer field. The literal loss of half of my mass has made me faster, stronger, and a happier person overall, and now I can't wait for those soccer tryouts at the end of January to finally bring all of my hard work to a culmination.