Undergraduate / Common App Essay: Achievement/Significant experience- fixing my boat [3]

Common App Essay: Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dillema you have faced and its impact on you.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated....

Spring was nearing, and the chill from winter would soon be away. This meant only one thing in my mind, that the lake would soon break from its shell, and the liveliness would soon come to its surface. Living only a few miles from a sprawling mass of water, I learned that it was only right to take full advantage of the privileges that come with this. For years prior I stayed away from the lake, but this summer sparked a change in me. I grew an insatiable ambition for the enjoyment of life, and I would soon grow in a way I could never have anticipated.

I'd been waiting all winter to start the renovation on the boat I purchased during the off-season. As the snow began to melt, and a tint of green appeared on the trees, I readied myself for my project. I knew there was a certain responsibility that I was undertaking, having no significant mechanic, construction, or boating skills, but my desire to be water-bound overcame any doubt that I could have conjured. Being an optimist I figured an old-wooden boat would surely be easy to bring back to life; a bit of sanding, some paint, fine tuning, and it'd be like new. My naivety turned to reality.

Simply cleaning the ins and outs far exuded the time that I'd planned on working on it. Hours of sanding and prep work took up the time that my friends spent lounging on their sofas. Painting the hull, cabin, fly-bridge, and inadvertently my face, chest and back, consumed the week that everyone went camping. Basically my summer had turned upside down, as I was constantly working on my boat, with no play.

As the time went by, however, I noticed my skills begin to refine. Being a one man team I deciphered the quickest ways to get jobs done. Instead of the conventional palm sander, I used the 24 inch belt sander, which decreased my labor by three quarters. Instead of painting with a brush, I used a spray gun which painted at triple the speed. I'd started to use time management skills I didn't think I had and shear persistence I never thought I could show. Late nights working by the light of my garage and early mornings started with coffee and the newspaper made me feel like I was a hardened laborer.

Finally the project ended. Two thirds of the summer was gone, but that left one eternity of a month to enjoy my ship on the surface it was meant for. Starting as a project to fulfill only one desire (to have fun on the lake), this slowly transformed into a set of invaluable lessons. Seeing days and weeks of hard work put into fruition in as glorious a sight as the streamline look of my 1977 Skiff Craft gliding along the water's surface was priceless. For the first time I experienced gratification and a sense of true accomplishment. My summer was complete, I was changed.

Undergraduate / Pueblo, the city I live in - Prompt 1 for admission to UC schools: [5]

If anyone has any feedback, it would be greatly appreciated. Good or bad I can take it, please be truthful.

Describe the world you come from - for example, your family, community or school - and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.

The city that I live in is by no means an architectural gem. We have not produced many outstanding athletes, businessmen, or politicians. More often than not we make the wrong choice when choosing who should lead us and most times we don't follow current fashion or faddish behavior. We do not particularly mesh well with the larger cities surrounding us, and if I'm not mistaken we're talked down upon by most of the folks who live north of us. We, however, have qualities that can't be matched by our supposed superiors. We have character and compassion; qualities not so easily come by.

Built on the foundation of hard work, Pueblo was founded as the Steel-City. It was here that the Bessemer process skyrocketed as the most economic way of manufacturing steel, and it was here that high grade steel was manufactured into rail which linked our country together. Due to the high demand for workers, my city became the adopted home of immigrants from all corners of the world. Enriched with all backgrounds from Western and Eastern Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia, we are a microcosm of what NYC would be if they hadn't been on steroids.

Some of our qualities can be easy to miss just by driving through a neighborhood, but it is the nuanced aspects of my city that make it great. Many of my northern "friends" have informed me what they really think of my city (that it's a ghetto, dilapidated place), but they have surely missed what truly makes a city great; a diverse population, hard workers, and most importantly tolerant individuals. It is from people who've experienced adversity, poverty, and prejudice first hand that a sense of community emerges and character is born.

It used to be that this sense of community was only found between immigrants banded together in a single neighborhood, but as time clicked by these sects saw their common circumstance and became more accepting of each other and their sense of community became larger. They learned that compromise and acceptance of diversity was an essential ingredient of success. Although they celebrated their individuality, they appreciated that they were just one small aspect of this greater phenomenon called humanity. I guess I would've been able to understand this by simply reading the writings of the great philosophers, but I would never have felt it so passionately.

What I'm getting at is that my community has given me a special gift, a gift of not being judgmental, of not seeing myself as special. I have an insight in seeing the significance and value of every person, which does not create an arbitrary hierarchy, which ranks human importance and minimizes some existence. My experience has led me to reject pointless elitism and the politics of exclusion. It has been these community teachings that have educated me on the essential lessons of acceptance, tolerance, and compassion. It is, I believe, these qualities which will shape my goals and define my successes or failures.