Undergraduate / Fight for good education - Common App Essay - (Background) [5]

"So what's it going to be, Sara?"

"Undecided," I reply tentatively.

"Are you sure?" my mother asks me, surprised, turning around and searching my gaze with her own.

I'm sitting at the old kitchen table, cutting up vegetables for lunch. Or dinner, it's really one and the same in our house. The buzz of the broken yellow light above and gurgle of the water on the stove make background for the uncomfortable stretch of silence between us.

"Yes." I finally decide and meet her gaze firmly.

Today, there will be a population census in Bosnia&Herzegovina, the first one after 1991. The time to declare my non-existent nationality. I decided to be undecided.

My parents were one of the last Serbo-Croatian couples to marry in Bosnia before the 1992 war. My Serbian Orthodox father's best man was a Muslim and my Catholic mother's maid of honor was Serbian Orthodox. Through my entire life my parent's served as an exercise in tolerance for other nationalities and religions. They didn't want to baptize me in either church because they believed I should be the one to decide on my nationality and religion. So I had a period in my life when I wanted to analyze various aspects of each culture and religion and choose a nationality for myself. Honestly, the whole process made me generally confused about Bosnia, so I threw it out of the option. I do not feel like I belong to any particular ethnic group in Bosnia or elsewhere; to me, my homeland is defined like Andric's Visegrad in "The Drina Brigde", my people are the Orthodox and Catholic Christians, the Muslims and the Jews. I know that is the Bosnia I wish it to be, not the one other people see. But "The Land of Blood and Honey" - really, Angelina Jolie? Nothing that dramatic. Today, it is more like the Land of Complaining and Passive Endurance.

Sometimes I understand that compulsion to complain all too well. Perhaps that is why it irritates me so much. My family lives by $530 per month which is, even by Bosnian standards, low income. You see, my parents are smart people, but they never stood a chance in life. My father was conscripted into army; my mother could never afford college. However, they are positive and they somehow make even filling out CSS and punching mostly zeroes in fun. That is the thing I adore the most about them: they never let life get them down. Sometimes the cracks of the perfect family life they try to make for me reveal their own insecurities and fears, but they tolerate every situation that arises. My mother was fired three months ago and every day my father's pay check is late we fear that he may lose his job and that we will be left without any income. When I think about how some things are unfair when you don't have money, I remember them and chastise myself for even thinking about it. Complaining is never worth the time.

My parents often joke about how I will definitely have to fight for good education and support them in pension with "my smarts" and love of the academics but, honestly, there is nothing I would rather do. Sometimes it gets tough but after the storm passes I see that I'm not far of the course and move on. Seeing the stoicism of my parents, who never had their chance, I would be too embarrassed to complain about my chances own in life. That is my true heritage - all of the things they taught me - not my nationality. I want to be a citizen of the world. I want diversity: intellectual, academic, ethnic. I believe I have plenty of chances today, infinitely more that my parents ever did, and I plan to fight and use them all to the best of my abilities.

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The punctuation in English is very different from punctuation in my native language. We use a lot more of it, so I am afraid that I might have put commas where they don't belong etc. :/ Native English speakers, please help!

I already posted one essay on this forum. If you are interested, please read that one too and tell me which one is better.
Deadlines approaching, yikes!

Thank you in advance, you wonderful people, you! :)

Undergraduate / openness and positivism- Vanderbilt Extracurricular Activity Writing Supplement [2]

Honestly, at first I was reluctant to start volunteering at a drug rehabilitation center. It was a residential center, one of those that didn't utilize methadone or any other drug to help the residents, and I liked the idea in theory. However, as I neared Marjanovac I felt an irrational kind of fear, a stupid prejudice screaming at me that it was not such a good idea."What do they need me for?" , I thought, sitting on the bus with a very uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. "They are in Marjanovac because of their private problems, I could only make them uncomfortable." Even though the residents gave their consent to permit volunteers into Marjanovac, I felt like they would not be very thrilled to have a kid like me snooping around.

How wrong.

Instead of rejection, I was met with such openness and positivism. At first I was afraid of asking too many questions or making the residents uncomfortable in any way. However, people openly shared their life stories with me and I was touched and honored by their trust. It is a part of what eventually inspired my wish to study psychology. I discovered "the listener" in me. It would be easy to turn away and say "They don't need me", but not necessarily right.

The first meeting ended with a resident from the center crying and hugging me in thanks for not avoiding "people like them" and I knew I would be back. And for the next three years, I was.

Essays / Help choosing my topic - UChicago supplement [3]

I already wrote both, now I need to choose (so hard). :)
The first one is about crying (and how I see it as an awesome, useful thing), and the second one is about me making lists all of the time.

The both fit under "You are you and your...?" prompt. Now, is it a bit risky talking about crying all the time? Too personal? Too... loony? I do make light of it and I conclude that its just a vent for everyday frustration, but I am afraid it may perhaps seem as too weird. The one about lists is "standard UChicago quirky" and is a safer bet, but I feel the first one might be more personal. What do you say - which one should I go for?