Scholarship / Me helping people - Describe yourself in 285 words. [2]

Currently I am pass the word limit by a few words, and I was wondering if you guys can possibly help me with telling what I should add, replace, or take away. Thank you for your time!

Describe yourself in 285 words.

Throughout my life, I have always enjoyed listening to stories no matter what language they are told in. Stories are simply a pathway that allows you to view things from a different perspective. With the many people there are on earth there are simply many stories out there waiting to be told, but sadly there are many that are locked away and lost in time. Many times these stories are lost due to people wanting to forget them or them not having anyone to listen to their story.

Therefore, I aim to not let those stories become lost in time, that is why I long to become a social worker. I am willing to listen to people talk for countless hours and not become bored because of how different everyone's story is. Not only do I want to become a social worker so I can listen to people's stories but so I can be able to use and analyze the details in their own stories so I can help them. For me just being able to help people out with just even doing the smallest deed makes me the happiest person in the world, for just seeing a person smile can also make me smile.

Furthermore, not only do I enjoy helping people and listening to what people have to say, but I also enjoy being around children. Being the oldest child in my family I have always been surrounded by young children. Through the many years of being around small children, I have learned how to be able to understand them and help them out whenever they are in trouble.

Although I do not know what my own story will unfold, I do know that it will include me listening to numerous stories and helping people.

Undergraduate / Personal Statement Coalition essay [NEW]

Directions: Tell a story from your life, describing an experience that either demonstrates your character or helped to shape it.

Throughout my life, I have always enjoyed listening to stories no matter what language they are told in. When I was in first grade my teacher would tell us countless stories about magical worlds, but sadly would never get the chance to finish each story they told us since we were always busy with completing assignments in class. As every sliver of hope I had of ever being able to finish a story, my teacher told a miracle accrued when the book fair came to our school and I discovered that one of the books my teacher read to us was being sold there. When I discovered that I quickly ran up to my parents and begged them to buy me the book. My parents, seeing how much I wanted the book, bought it for me with the little money they had.

My excitement of being able to finally finish one of the stories my teachers told, made me completely overlook the fact that I did not know how to read, and when I received the book and opened it up I was greeted with rows of text which seemed like a secret code you would see in a spy movie. As I wanted to finish the story I sought help from my parents, but they, just like me, were completely clueless to what the book said since they also did not know how to read in English. At that moment I realized that I am now left alone figuring out how to read the book, and although it seemed to be the perfect moment to give up and wait until I learned how to read my curiosity said otherwise. Being like a detective like in the stories I heard, I opened up the book once again, and using all the knowledge I learned in school I began to decode the book. I started with sounding out each letter and turning them into words and soon those words became sentences and before I knew it those sentences became paragraphs. After months of reading the book, I finally finished the 30 paged book and figured out how the story ended.

Throughout my life, I continued being placed in similar situations to the one of me attempting to finish the book back in first grade. Situations in which I was left alone to discover how to do something. As I used the knowledge that I have learned in the past I was able to use them to teach myself how to do a variety of things that no one would have been able to teach me how to do. I taught myself how to cook although throughout the way I received many burnt marks and cuts, I also taught myself how to be early to meetings which is something my parents fail to do, and most importantly I taught myself how to be independent. Learning how to be independent allowed me to take on many tasks on my own and to discover the type of person I am today. Although unlike many people I was left in a world by myself to discover things on my own without any help, and even though it made life challenging it also made it fun because of all the trial and error I had to go through to complete the task. At the end of the day when placed in an unfamiliar situation you should put on your detective hat and start decoding the task you are partaking in because giving up would lead you to continue wondering what situation could have become if you did not give up on it.

Undergraduate / A story from your life, showing an experience that demonstrates your character or helped to shape it [2]

College personal statement

Directions: Tell a story from your life, describing an experience that either demonstrates your character or helped to shape it.

There I stood conflicted on whether or not to fight for my own thoughts and beliefs or to continue being the obedient "little girl" people wanted me to be. Throughout my life growing up I was told by many people around me that I am too young to be able to form my own opinion and that why won't I be a little obedient girl and just stay quiet. Over the countless years of hearing people around me telling me these things the more, I started to believe in it, and the more I started to lose my voice and became that obedient little girl they wanted me to be.

Eventually when I started attending school these ideas that people had ingrained in me greatly affected me throughout my school journey, for I believed that if I were to ask anyone for help or stated something that I believed was right or wrong that I would be yelled at and judged by my peers and teachers. For the longest time, I stayed silent in school hoping that I would continue to have acceptance from my peers and teachers, but because of me staying silent I would often find myself being placed in undesirable situations when it came to trying to complete an assignment that I had no idea on how to do. As I grew older and continued my educational journey in school there was one thing I started to notice and that is that many of my peers around me both female and male would many times state their own thoughts and opinions and to my utter surprise they would not be judged by others and be casted as an outcast but instead people would demonstrate respect towards that person's opinions. The more and more I saw this happening the more I started to question the idea that people around me had ingrained into my head, and that is when I started to question myself on whether or not my opinion really does matter.

One day as I came back from school I noticed two adults that I had grown up with as a child talking about conspiracy theories about the government. One of the adults, seeing me pass by started talking to me about how the government wants to kill people through vaccines. There I stood awkwardly contemplating weather or not I should tell the person what I believed or just stay silent and agree with them so they would not yell at me for talking back, but after a few minutes of hearing what they had to say I grew annoyed knowing that their points where not logical and without knowing I abruptly blurted out "But your points make no sense why would the government do something like that?"

Seeing the facial expressions of the two adults and noticing what I just said out loud I started to immediately regret what I just said and before I was able to apologize, one of them asked me why I believed that. Startled I answered their question realising that there is no way out of the situation I placed myself in. Although, at first I was filled with fear of what reactions are going to come from the adults due to my different point of view on the topic, I soon discovered that that fear slowly transformed into enjoyment the more I talked with them. Before we knew it, it became late and all of us left with no one becoming belligerent at each other due to our conflicting views. At that moment seeing how the conversation went, it was the moment that finally allowed me to break free from those ideas taught to me so long ago; thus, allowing that quiet obedient girl everyone knew to finally find her voice again and ever since then she never allowed anyone to take it away from her again.