Undergraduate / Videos and games - Commonapp: Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea [4]

Hello! I wrote my first personal statement draft, can you give me feedbacks on this?

personal statement essay

I am as messy and noisy as it gets. So the fact that I became one of the best graduates from high school came as a shock to many. In fact, I even heard someone gasp at the news. I stood there among a math genius, a physics maniac, a prodigy coder and received the same workplace invitations as them. My parents were crying too. We had a big fight about me graduating without learning anything the night before. So naturally I would've went "Ha! Now you see why I was behind that computer all the time?". In reality I was playing games as they suspected but who cares?

As it turned out, I cared. A few days later I started asking myself if I really was worth being the best graduate. Maybe I just got lucky there. Maybe my parents cried over a valueless title. I had to ask myself what I've done to deserve such an award? After all, I never got an International Olympiads medal like the others on that stage. Then I started regretting over the time I spent playing on that computer. Who knows? I may have had an international bronze at least? The computer, though, came at a great price. I had been asking my parents to buy me one ever since second grade when they finally bought one for me in 9th grade. I had told them I would make movies, music, Youtube videos, programs, artificial intelligence and video games. Don't let my passionate tone confuse you, these were nothing but a big cover-up for playing video games.

But the only way I could keep playing video games was if I lived up to those cover-ups. I never really saw them as strenuous work though; to me it was just the part of playing video games. The first thing I did was making a Harry Potter movie. Green thingies coming out from little kids' pencils, me defeating everyone at the same time in the end, the whole shabang. It must've took over 120 hours for me to make that 5 minute video. I could make a much better looking Harry Potter movie now just in case you see it. This was my first Youtube video followed by a 40 more. There are exactly 3 diss tracks from those. But that happened 2 years ago, my English improved exponentially since then. Anyways, that was a bit embarrassing part of my life (that I'm likely to get back to later). Not so much for the artificial intelligence though. All I managed to do was making a moving triangle that can respond to different greetings. I'm still proud of it though.

Looking back at the stuff I did to play video games, I may have found the answer to my question. I don't know the exact reason why they chose me as the best graduate, but I would guess it was because of my passion and determination. These cover-ups ended up growing into other passions of mine and that's just how things went with me. All of a sudden my extreme confidence was back, I deserved to be on that stage. Don't get me wrong, my passion didn't only show in video games. It was everywhere: I came to this school without any English and became the best, won a history debate against my history teacher, became one of the most respected members of our debate club, learnt to play the guitar, the piano, and this thing called launchpad.

However, as cocky as I may sound, I didn't think of anything negative as I stood on that stage. Looking at my parents cry on my graduation day filled me with pride, and all I could think of was how they fought so hard to make me who I was. I started tearing up but managed to hold on because all my friends were looking at me.