Undergraduate / "Looking Back" - Common App Essay---Evaluate a significant experience [5]

I was hoping for some feedback and any suggestions on this essay.

Prompt: Evaluate a significant experience in your life and how it has affected you.

If you don't believe the essay relates well enough to the topic above say so and it can be put under the Topic of your Choice prompt.

Looking Back

As a kid I remember answering the question that seems so monumental today as I approach college, but was so easy before: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I heard it a million times as I grew up, everywhere from preschool to fifth grade, on the swings, in a class, in the gym; everyone always wanted to know what I wanted to be. My answer changed with the seasons− I went from wanting to be a doctor, to a policeman, to a fire fighter, but the common denominator was that I always wanted to help someone. I shuffled randomly through professions− that is, until my brother got sick.

When I was in first grade, my brother was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, a type of brain cancer, and began his years of recovery, which included brutal chemotherapy, radiation treatments and brain surgery. During those years I spent in and out of the hospital, I noticed the effects the oncology ward had not only on my family, but all the families there. What I saw and experienced there would repulse just about anyone. Make them fear the hospital. Make them wish that they would never have to see the inside of one again. I felt exactly that way for years; I learned to hate those sterile rooms and detest the deathly quiet of those hallways. I hated the way that place turned my life upside down. I despised everything about the hospital. I hated spending birthdays there instead of at home; I hated never having sleepovers, because everyone was at the hospital; I hated that my parents took my brother to the hospital, but not me to my soccer games. The hospital was the source of my misery during those dark years, but once my brother was cured I escaped that place for years, though eventually my neighbor fell seriously ill and I was forced to return.

My neighbor was hospitalized after her liver function drastically decreased and she was told she would require a transplant. When she underwent her transplant, I decided to brave those dark white halls again to see her and hopefully comfort her. This visit brought memories crashing back, but the entire visit was from a totally different perspective. I was older, I was wiser, and I saw things in a whole new light. Before, I had only seen disease rip apart my family: now I saw it striking all those around me as well. It was at this point that I realized how disease affects everyone. No one escapes.

* * *

When I finally decided what I wanted be, I remembered those troubled halls and the pale faces staring out at me from each and every room as I walked through the hospital. I dwelled on the hardships my family and my neighbor's family faced in those terrible years of sickness, but what I kept coming back to was how cancer specifically ripped apart even the strongest patients and their families. I remembered the emaciated bodies and the translucent skin of every kid in the oncology ward. I remembered the suffering I saw. I always went back to those kids, and I couldn't imagine doing anything but helping them. That night I finally knew what to do with my life, and it didn't matter how hard it would be to go back to the hospital: I'm going to be an oncologist.

Thanks in Advance

Undergraduate / Common App (Elaborate on an Activity - Baseball) [4]

I was hoping to get some input on whether or not this is a strong elaboration on one of my activities for the Common Application.

Prompt: Please elaborate on one of your activities (150 words or fewer).

Baseball has always been my passion; it has taught me numerous lessons throughout my life, but none more valuable than perseverance. Baseball comes naturally to me, and before high school nothing could have changed my love of the game. My junior year I was told I could remain on JV another year or I could quit. I was dumbfounded; it had never occurred to me that I wouldn't make varsity. I had gone from hoping to make varsity sophomore year to failing to make it junior year. I wavered all night on whether I'd show up for practice the next day, but I remembered the years I had devoted to baseball, and couldn't see myself giving up when I finally faced a little adversity. My passion for the game ultimately lead me to play, and taught me that you must always persevere in the face of adversity. (147 words)

Thank You in advance