Undergraduate / "military analogies" - UC Admissions Essay [4]

Hey, can y'all help out a bit? I've been told this essay was a tad...impersonal.

Essay 1
Although military analogies are reserved for aged generals rather than young men, I cannot describe my approach to education in any other language but that of the military. How else could I describe my two pronged assault into the domains of my passion: politics and art?

The first thrust of this invasion was into the impregnable stronghold of words, handshakes, and melodrama that we call politics. Speech and Debate, Mock Trial, and Model UN have been my primary engines for this endeavor; I have struggled mightily in those fields, achieving both the glorious victory of a golden placard and the shameful defeat of an unfavorable ruling. I managed to not only strengthen my arsenal of political arguments, but more importantly, to forge a fortress of self confidence.

But it is not only through politics that I have achieved progress on the campaign towards collegiate success; through artistry, I have fought my way through the sister fields of writing and video. It is through the production of award winning films and the management of an often unwieldy crew that I learned to lead men by their hearts, and the crafting of essays for AP classes and literary magazines that I learned to lead them by their minds.