Undergraduate / 'Life in a honest world' - my essay for University of California [2]

Please give me some advice!! And I will definitely read yours...

Prompt 1: 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.

"No, I won't help you." I said firmly to a friend sitting next to me with the most miserable expression I had ever seen. It was not that I did not want to help him. It was because it was in an exam room. If not, I was eager to sit next to him side-by-side and try to help him the easy calculus problems that seemed difficult at first.

"The proctor is not in the room at the moment. Please do me this favor!"
"No!"
I know the importance of friendship and the power of relationship, but there was something more crucial and critical that sometimes I must sacrifice others in order to maintain it -- honesty.

I come from a middle school that taught me the importance and the value of honesty. And that is the community I come from and I am very grateful for that. My middle school valued honesty as the first rule and made it thrive in every corner on campus. For example, there were no proctors during exams, no matter how important the tests were. So that every exam tested both students' knowledge and personality. Living and studying in such a community enhanced my moral understanding and the true value of life: resist the short-term gain of deceit because honesty pays off in big dividends in the long run.

I choose not to help my friend during exams because I understand the value of honesty and that not only I would be guilty of cheating but that it would also harm my friend by preventing him from thinking independently and trying to study and work for his own future. I believe the survival of a society as a whole depends very much on its honest level, no matter whether the issue of honesty is big or small. I know it is true that there are more serious deceptions taking place in my country as well as the rest of the world. How can people believe someone who has broken his promises for many times? How can people trust someone who can easily vacillate and betray in front of good-looking scores, money and fame? How can people lent money to someone who does not pay back the sum he or she borrowed? When people loose their honest credit in their society, there is nothing they can do because the rest of the world is watching them with eyes of doubt, distrust, and even disdain.

I always have a dream to establish and live in a honest world. Because in a such society with no deceptions such as briberies, business cheating, counterfeit products, not only can transactions be made more frequently and safely, government run more efficiently, and people have a higher quality of products, but most importantly people can live in a world without distrust.

I choose to be honest and to act upon honest decisions, and I believe my community and the world choose the same.

Undergraduate / Dream of becoming an Architect; Commonapp Architecture/ A RISK YOU HAVE TAKEN [5]

This is the main essay on Commonapp about architecture, please give me advice!! thxïź
Submitting in an hour!!

TopicïźšEvaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

"Mum, did you hide my sketchbook again?" I asked my mother angrily, looking for my sketchbook but could not find it anywhere after I got back home.

"How many times did I tell you not to waste your time doodling like a three-year-old?"My mother replied without even looked at me.
Obviously, she had hid it.
Always wanted me to be a computer science professor like my father and never paying attention to my sketch works, my mother tried her best to stop me from "wasting my time" to become an architect. But I could not simply give up. Hours were like seconds when I expressed myself through drawing and designing. As a result of her unsupported actions, I decided to prove to her that my dream to become an architect was worthy.

A month before my mother's birthday, every night after my parents went to bed, I sneaked out of bed, turned up my lamp, and started to design a shed. Because I knew she always wanted to have a shed in our unconstructed garden. First, I divided the garden vertically into two areas. The division was made by a shed which extended via timber beams across the yard, bisecting the main court and providing a dominant central gateway. Inside the half open shed, fixed timber corner seats were designed for my father to drink afternoon coffee and an additional empty space beside them was left for my mother's hobby of growing vegetables. Glass window slides covered atop the shed was used for sufficient lighting. After I finished the design three weeks later, I went through the basic materials online and made sure that all of them were affordable.

The night before my mother's birthday, I put my design worksheet with a "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" card on the dining table after she went bed. Looking at my own work, I smiled with an inexplicable feeling mixed with proud, excitement but also anxiousness. Because I knew I was taking a risk. If my mother did not like my design, not only three weeks of my efforts became meaningless, but I also lost the battle of convincing my mother to support my dream.

The next day's morning, I saw my mother reading my plan on the worksheet carefully with great interests. Feeling a basketball bouncing up and down in my heart, I walked towards her.

"Did you draw all this?" She asked as she saw me and smiled.
"Yes!" I answered confidently as I knew from her smile that I had won! The basketball stopped bouncing inside my heart when my mother hugged me. From her eyes, I could tell that she finally realized that their son's sketch works were not simply doodles but useful designs.

Although in the end I did not know my father had already signed the contract with an architect to design the shed and therefore did not use my plan, my mother never questions my dream of becoming an architect any more. From then on, she began to encourage me to pursue my dream. And I am even more determined to be an architect.