ImClueless
Apr 5, 2014
Undergraduate / The Broken Boy / CommonApp Essay - Background [7]
I'm currently in the process of preparing myself for applications next year. I just wrote it and would appriciate any suggestions you have to offer (I'm not the best writer :P) This is my CommonApp essay on the first prompt:
Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. (250-650 words)
I still remember the looks of horror that my parents gave me when I was six years old. They would watch the way I walked with pained faces as they tried to solve the mystery of my limp. After failing to get a diagnosis at local establishments, they arrived at the conclusion that I would need a specialist. Eventually doctors discovered my problem; my femoral head was dying. The lack of blood flow slowly extinguished the life in the bone, and it began to collapse under the weight it was built to hold. The doctor diagnosed me with severe Legg-Calve Perthes disease, a discovery that changed my life forever.
From that day on, everything was different. I was no longer allowed to walk; I had to use a wheelchair or crutches. To make the situation worse, a few months later I went to my first day of Kindergarten. To say the least, I was devastated. Not only was I away from my parents for the first time in my life, but everywhere I turned there were children staring with alien eyes, trying to figure out what was wrong with the kid in wheelchair. As days past it got easier, people were interested in me, so they wheeled me around outside as they attempted to figure me out. I thought that my alienation would never end, but eventually the day came, and I was once again free to walk with the other children. Just long enough to have my dreams crushed.
The doctors said that my hip was finally recovering, and it was unlikely that I would need to have surgery until my late teens, so they told my parents that I could use a combination of crutches and walking unaided. I remember how excited I was to go back to school the next day and use the playground and make friends, but it never happened. I walked out that day and began to climb the stairs to the slide beside the smiling faces that had surrounded me since the start of the year, but before I ever got a chance to use the spiraling piece of beige plastic my arm was caught in the supervisor's iron grip. I was walked to the edge of the grass where she told me to wait. Soon my mother was there at my side explaining everything. I wasn't allowed to use the playground, I wasn't allowed to participate in P.E., and I wasn't even allowed to walk around at recess. So I sat, three times a day for over three years.
I quickly got over the fact that I was not allowed to be normal, and I began something that the others wouldn't for years, I sat and learned. While everybody was exercising their legs, I was exercising my brain, they were free to run, but so was my mind. By the time everybody else was finishing addition, I had already taught myself algebra. When it came to vocabulary, nobody could beat the kid that read for hours every day. However much the others tried to trump me in academics, they couldn't, and I loved it. My time alone had set me apart, but eventually I found friends that I still have today through the highly capable program, my isolation was over.
The exhilaration that I received from learning a new fact was indescribable, and I never wanted to stop. Eventually, through my father, I discovered engineering. I would often sit and try to decipher his works as a geotechnical engineer, a daunting task that I still have not completed. I started building things and learning about the way things work. My relatives bought me books on the subject, and I grew into the person that I am today. I still sit, read, and learn about everything that I can, the only difference it I do it with friends at my side now.
I'm currently in the process of preparing myself for applications next year. I just wrote it and would appriciate any suggestions you have to offer (I'm not the best writer :P) This is my CommonApp essay on the first prompt:
Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. (250-650 words)
I still remember the looks of horror that my parents gave me when I was six years old. They would watch the way I walked with pained faces as they tried to solve the mystery of my limp. After failing to get a diagnosis at local establishments, they arrived at the conclusion that I would need a specialist. Eventually doctors discovered my problem; my femoral head was dying. The lack of blood flow slowly extinguished the life in the bone, and it began to collapse under the weight it was built to hold. The doctor diagnosed me with severe Legg-Calve Perthes disease, a discovery that changed my life forever.
From that day on, everything was different. I was no longer allowed to walk; I had to use a wheelchair or crutches. To make the situation worse, a few months later I went to my first day of Kindergarten. To say the least, I was devastated. Not only was I away from my parents for the first time in my life, but everywhere I turned there were children staring with alien eyes, trying to figure out what was wrong with the kid in wheelchair. As days past it got easier, people were interested in me, so they wheeled me around outside as they attempted to figure me out. I thought that my alienation would never end, but eventually the day came, and I was once again free to walk with the other children. Just long enough to have my dreams crushed.
The doctors said that my hip was finally recovering, and it was unlikely that I would need to have surgery until my late teens, so they told my parents that I could use a combination of crutches and walking unaided. I remember how excited I was to go back to school the next day and use the playground and make friends, but it never happened. I walked out that day and began to climb the stairs to the slide beside the smiling faces that had surrounded me since the start of the year, but before I ever got a chance to use the spiraling piece of beige plastic my arm was caught in the supervisor's iron grip. I was walked to the edge of the grass where she told me to wait. Soon my mother was there at my side explaining everything. I wasn't allowed to use the playground, I wasn't allowed to participate in P.E., and I wasn't even allowed to walk around at recess. So I sat, three times a day for over three years.
I quickly got over the fact that I was not allowed to be normal, and I began something that the others wouldn't for years, I sat and learned. While everybody was exercising their legs, I was exercising my brain, they were free to run, but so was my mind. By the time everybody else was finishing addition, I had already taught myself algebra. When it came to vocabulary, nobody could beat the kid that read for hours every day. However much the others tried to trump me in academics, they couldn't, and I loved it. My time alone had set me apart, but eventually I found friends that I still have today through the highly capable program, my isolation was over.
The exhilaration that I received from learning a new fact was indescribable, and I never wanted to stop. Eventually, through my father, I discovered engineering. I would often sit and try to decipher his works as a geotechnical engineer, a daunting task that I still have not completed. I started building things and learning about the way things work. My relatives bought me books on the subject, and I grew into the person that I am today. I still sit, read, and learn about everything that I can, the only difference it I do it with friends at my side now.