aadnub
Oct 20, 2012
Undergraduate / UC personal statement: the Appetite behind my Aspirations [3]
Thank you so much for your help! I'm happy to review yours too. :)
Prompt: "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."
"I'm hungry," declares Jacob. "Where should we go?"
"Wow, we have a lot of great options," I said after pulling up nearby restaurants on my phone. "A pizza place, rated four stars, an Indian restaurant also rated well, a popular Greek restaurant, Chipotle..."
"CHIPOTLE!" everyone shouts.
Sigh.
I love my closest friends, but no one ever wants to eat anything but Chipotle, In-N-Out, or other mainstream American food chains. When I'm with them, I appreciate my enthusiasm for global cuisine.
Like many children, I used to be a finicky eater, rejecting bacon, hamburgers, peanut butter sandwiches, and most other foods. Oftentimes nothing on a menu would interest me, and at my favorite restaurants I usually ordered the same dish. Thankfully, my parents weaned me off of those dining habits, and over the past few years my taste buds have developed to appreciate so much more variety.
Although I've never traveled out of the country, I now love experiencing the world at the dinner table. My mom, an immigrant from the Philippines, prepares dishes that I cannot find anywhere else. I remember that a Christmas Eve years ago when my mom came home with a giant cow tongue, wrapped in plastic.
"What are you going to do with that thing?" I asked with a scrunched up face.
I never could have expected that my mom's beef tongue stew, called delah, would be one of the best meals I have ever eaten, and my whole family insisted that it become a Christmas tradition.
Although my dad's Hawaiian heritage also exposed me to other amazing foods, he most strongly contributed to my developing appetite by being a foreign food fanatic. Dad and I visited so many "hole-in-the-wall" restaurants that he discovered after years of working in LA. With him, I discovered God's gift to man, sushi, as well as Thai curry, Persian kabobs, Chinese dim sum, and more.
The founder of Chick-fil-A once said, "Food is essential to life, therefore make it good." After my mealtimes had improved when I opened up to exotic foods, I wanted to share my experiences with friends. After months of urging them to try sometime new, I convinced them in August of this year to try sushi. Despite their hesitations about raw fish, all of them instantly loved the flavor of albacore and eel. Sharing exotic food with my others is as satisfying as enjoying the food myself.
Likewise, my enthusiasm for food is the same underlying passion that shapes my academic achievements and aspirations. The thrill of savoring a new dish for the first time is the same satisfaction in education. That thrill is how I stay focused on my curriculum as a homeschooler. More importantly, however, the act of sharing that food translates into a driving passion to use lessons from education to improve the lives of others. Whether the "dish" I will offer the world is symbolic of political reform or the literal act of feeding a hungry child, I am confident that I will find that dish and its recipe within the "feast" of a college education.
Thank you so much for your help! I'm happy to review yours too. :)
Prompt: "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."
"I'm hungry," declares Jacob. "Where should we go?"
"Wow, we have a lot of great options," I said after pulling up nearby restaurants on my phone. "A pizza place, rated four stars, an Indian restaurant also rated well, a popular Greek restaurant, Chipotle..."
"CHIPOTLE!" everyone shouts.
Sigh.
I love my closest friends, but no one ever wants to eat anything but Chipotle, In-N-Out, or other mainstream American food chains. When I'm with them, I appreciate my enthusiasm for global cuisine.
Like many children, I used to be a finicky eater, rejecting bacon, hamburgers, peanut butter sandwiches, and most other foods. Oftentimes nothing on a menu would interest me, and at my favorite restaurants I usually ordered the same dish. Thankfully, my parents weaned me off of those dining habits, and over the past few years my taste buds have developed to appreciate so much more variety.
Although I've never traveled out of the country, I now love experiencing the world at the dinner table. My mom, an immigrant from the Philippines, prepares dishes that I cannot find anywhere else. I remember that a Christmas Eve years ago when my mom came home with a giant cow tongue, wrapped in plastic.
"What are you going to do with that thing?" I asked with a scrunched up face.
I never could have expected that my mom's beef tongue stew, called delah, would be one of the best meals I have ever eaten, and my whole family insisted that it become a Christmas tradition.
Although my dad's Hawaiian heritage also exposed me to other amazing foods, he most strongly contributed to my developing appetite by being a foreign food fanatic. Dad and I visited so many "hole-in-the-wall" restaurants that he discovered after years of working in LA. With him, I discovered God's gift to man, sushi, as well as Thai curry, Persian kabobs, Chinese dim sum, and more.
The founder of Chick-fil-A once said, "Food is essential to life, therefore make it good." After my mealtimes had improved when I opened up to exotic foods, I wanted to share my experiences with friends. After months of urging them to try sometime new, I convinced them in August of this year to try sushi. Despite their hesitations about raw fish, all of them instantly loved the flavor of albacore and eel. Sharing exotic food with my others is as satisfying as enjoying the food myself.
Likewise, my enthusiasm for food is the same underlying passion that shapes my academic achievements and aspirations. The thrill of savoring a new dish for the first time is the same satisfaction in education. That thrill is how I stay focused on my curriculum as a homeschooler. More importantly, however, the act of sharing that food translates into a driving passion to use lessons from education to improve the lives of others. Whether the "dish" I will offer the world is symbolic of political reform or the literal act of feeding a hungry child, I am confident that I will find that dish and its recipe within the "feast" of a college education.