Undergraduate / "My father took me out to play golf" (experience) - trouble ending my essay for GWU [NEW]

The prompt asks how a experience, something you've tried, or a person you know has shaped your thinking. I am limited to 500 words so don't be afraid to rid the essay of unnecessary things!

Golf is a game where the mental aspect completely overwhelms the physical. When playing a round of golf, your score reflects how you played, not how your team played. There is no one for you to blame for a bad round except for yourself. When professionals play on television and they miss that important putt, there is no one to "pick up" the game and change the pace, the professional must get himself together. I have learned all of this after playing golf for nearly eight years. I learned certain values after playing certain rounds of golf. Golf has completely shaped the way I think, but it did not happen all at once.

My father took me out to play golf when I was about 10 years old. My dad taught me the basics of a swing and I was amazed at how many components there are to just swing the club. After weeks of practicing, I began to hit the balls. I was very frustrated that I could not hit the ball far. I threw fits and got angry. My dad told me that I needed to relax and focus on swinging the club and keeping my form. Every time I focused on my swing and concentrated, I would it farther. Golf taught me patience as I became more skilled. When playing on the course, after hitting many bad shots in a row, I would remain focused and slow myself down. Golf has taught me to be responsible for my round no matter the results. There are many possibilities where my ball would land after I hit it, which has taught me to be creative and evaluate how I would hit the shot. Learning how to play taught me important values, and it continued on when I began to compete.

When I began high school, my father made sure that I joined the golf team. As a freshman, I was already ranked third on the team. During tournaments, I would keep score for another person, who would also be keeping my score. After each hole, we would compare the scores we got for each other. I learned to be honest on the golf course, and to always correct the player if he had the wrong score for me. Golf presents many opportunities to cheat. If I hit my ball in too thick woods, I could easily bring another ball with me to drop. That would be a penalty that requires two strokes. Integrity became of the most important values I learned on the golf course. At a majority of these tournaments, my dad would come to watch me. I would get nervous and frustrated, and as I got older I learned to ignore every outside influence that surrounded me. Everything that golf has taught me, I have applied in my everyday life.

After nearly eight years of golf, the values golf taught me have become essential to my life. I have learned to remain patient in everything I do and to be responsible for all my actions. Golf has taught me to cancel things out whenever I need to focus, which has benefited my test taking abilities. When faced with a challenge, I assess all possibilities and creatively decide how to approach the challenge. Golf has taught me integrity in any situation I am put in. Golf has made me mentally strong and it has taught me to be accountable for my actions.

Undergraduate / "Nothing ever turns out the way you picture it" essay for CUA [NEW]

John Keats wrote, "Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced - even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it." Please tell us about an experience in your own life which has illustrated a special proverb or quote that has meaning for you.

From a young age, my mother was the light of my life. Like most mothers, she cared and she loved me with all her heart, always making sure I was okay. I started to notice that my mother was not always well. Still, she put me above everything else, even if she was not feeling well. I found out as I got older, that my mother had breast cancer, and that she was fighting it as best as she could. For years my mother fought and she fought, and she always instilled a sense of determination in me. I knew that if my mother could fight cancer, and win, that I could achieve anything. Finally, after years of fighting, my mother emerged victorious, she had lived to tell the tale so to speak.

The years went by; my mother watched and helped me to grow to be the most proper young man I could be. I was not always perfect, and my mother, on occasion, would have to punish me in a fair but constructive way. I was growing up like any ideal child would. I had loving mother, father, step father, and step mother. My parents kept many things from me, because at the time, I was not mature enough to handle some of the things my parents kept from me. One day, my mother and my step father sat me down on my bed; they told me in the most peaceful way that my mother had cancer again. This time was different though; it was terminal cancer.

Again, my mother had to battle off the breast cancer, it had came back to claim my mother's life. My mother was a fighter; she fought so hard against the cancer, and still managed to take care of me. In the back of my mind, I had always feared that my mother would die from cancer. I always reassured myself that she could never die because someone that was as good as my mother, could never die from something as terrible as cancer. In short, I believed that God would not take away my mother from me; she was too good and graceful to be killed in that way.

A couple of years went by, and it seemed that things were not going to get better for my mother. The original breast cancer had spread to my mother's brain, so she was now battling breast and brain cancer. I was always hopeful that one day she would wake up, and feel better and I could live my life without constant fear of my mother dying. One day I got home from school, and my aunt was there. She told me that my mother was in the Emergency Room at the hospital with my step father. This had happened before, so I was not worried, I was sure that it was just a little discrepancy. A few hours went by, and my step father returned in tears and everything became inaudible. I could read my step fathers lips which told me of my mother's death. My aunt was in tears, my little sister did not understand, but she started to cry as well. I broke down, I screamed and I cried while everyone hugged me. My mother had died, and lost her battle.

To this day, I never forget the day my step father walked through the door crying with the bad news. After all those years of hoping and praying, it seemed worthless. At first I had felt betrayed by God and everything good in the world; I believed that it was wrong. There are so many people in the world that commit crimes and murders that are still roaming the streets, my mother never did a bad thing in her life, and she died. My mindset was quite narrow, but it broadened as I grew older. I had always reassured myself that everything would turn out okay and my mother would be cured and live a long and healthy life. I realized that every person has their time and purpose in life, and my mother had fulfilled it. My mother has inspired me to be the best person I can and achieve anything I choose to pursue. More importantly, she has proved one of the biggest proverbs I live my life by, "Nothing ever turns out the way you picture it".