Undergraduate / 'Education, the great equalizer of society' - Texas, Texas A&M, Issue of Importance [NEW]

Please don't beat around the bush if you see any glaring mistakes in my writing, I need to know!! Any commentary on how I can improve on this would be greatly appreciated. :D

Is it way too short?

Choose an issue of importance to you - the issue could be personal, school related, local, political, or international in scope - and write an essay in which you explain the significance of that issue to yourself, your family, your community, or your generation.

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"Education is not a preparation for life, education is life itself" -John Dewey

Education, the great equalizer of society, allows those who pursue it to be on equal footing with everybody else. Education knows no race, no class, or no shortcuts. I strongly believe that education is the greatest gift I can give to myself, and to my community.

As I pursue a career in engineering, and assess my life thus far as I transition from high school to college, I can really see how education is the best thing that has ever happened to me, it has opened my eyes up to who I am, it has shown me what I really want to do, and has shown what I can potentially give back to society. I believe that getting an education gives you more choices in life, ultimately allowing you more chances to leave an imprint on society. Whether I plan to design sky-scarpers, develop data storage techniques on the spin of electrons, or build spacecrafts for other-world exploration, I know that education can get me there, and that it is up to me to decide on what I can contribute to myself, and society.

In a society where being mediocre or just "good enough" isn't going to get you much, education is what sets you apart and allows you to pursue whatever you want later in life. Too often my peers ask, "When will I ever use this later in life?" When talking about related rates in calculus, or free body diagrams in physics. Education is the passport you can obtain to take you wherever you want to go in society. Without it you'll be stuck with what you know, and what you wish you could've learned, something I refuse to let happen to myself.

Undergraduate / 'my Mom has shaped me into the person' - Texas A&M, Topic A [3]

Any comments would be very appreciated! Please be VERY critical, be mean! I need all the analysis I can get to make this essay not sound so cliche and awkward!

Write an essay in which you tell us about someone who has made an impact on your life and explain how and why this person is important to you.

For many, finding a person that has a significant impact on one's life may
take years before they fully understand the magnitude of that person's
influence. Years of taking the little things that person does for granted,
years of persistent abuse endured by that person, years of naivete and growth
on my part that ultimately allowed me to reflect on my life as I contemplate
myself in the world as I prepare to enter the "real world". To really
assess how my Mom has shaped me into the person I am today, and how her
influence will guide me throughout the rest of my life.

Choosing to leave her impoverished life back in Vietnam, leaving her family,
customs, and life behind for an opportunity to find a life in America, an idea
so far fetched by many due to the fact that entire hordes of Vietnamese
refugees were fleeing Vietnam in fear of the tightening grip the communist had
been exerting on the quickly diminishing Vietnamese morale, an idea
with little fuel to flame, an idea that played against the odds of things
working out for her, a single being in a sea of lost hope and opportunity
showed me how much she cared about me even before I was even born.
Thrust into the vicious world known as public school, my hunger for success and
recognition was hindered by the fact that I was such an awkward and shy child.
I remember times when I would lay my head down on the desk after recess, in
elementary school, and dread going home where I knew hours of reading to fill
reading logs would consume me entirely, not knowing that this built the
foundation to my education.The hours of reading "recommended" books for my
grade level, along with the extra tutoring at Kumon really taught me that
education came before anything else. In middle school I was able to interact
with my peers more because we grew up together up through elementary school, we
all knew each other and we were all able to participate in various outside of
school activities together, it was the first time in my life where I could
"hang out" with people other then my family members. A time where I began to
take my mom for granted, the countless hours of dragging me from soccer
practices, to birthday parties, and back home. A time where I began to allow my
frustration boil over when I was asked to do my homework, the nagging my mom
persistently barraged me with forced the ignorance in me to take over my life
and become stuck up and self-centered. The excitement and anticipation of
spending my time in high school with my buddies that I've known for 7-8 years
died a quick death when I learned that I would be attending a different high
school the day before school started. I spent my freshmen year in a shell,
afraid of everybody around me, afraid to leave my mark on the world. It wasn't
until my junior year during a hiking trip at Lost Maples, surrounded by waving
fields of Auburn laced trees, a place where my mind was content to wander
through the burnt orange and gold stricken leaves, a place where I realized how
foolish I
had been, being so anti-social, and being content with my lack of drive to
change my attitude. I realized that my mom had come to America from an entirely
different world, went through high school with vernacular disadvantages,
graduated college with the odds against her, got a good paying job as a
pharmacist, and raised a family of three high maintenance children with every
possible obstacle hindering her. Who was I to waste my opportunity of success
at the expense of my mom because I was too scared to stand up, to feed my
hunger for recognition, to make a name for myself? Who was I to disappoint my
mom, the woman who had set up everything for me to be all I could in my life,
only to be wasted away because I was content with being another face in a sea
of mediocrity?

The woman who had taught me to respect others, the woman who taught me my
morals, the woman who taught me the prayers I pray at night, the woman who
moved halfway across the world for an opportunity to find the best quality of
life for her and her future was the woman who I could count on to give me a
meal at dinner time, the woman that I could count on to give me a ride home
from orchestra rehearsal, the woman that I couldn't stand to disappoint any
longer. As I transition from high school to college this opportunity has
allowed me to understand how important my mom is to me, no matter how cliche
that is. Through the trying times and adversity my mom was still able to "suck
the marrow out of life", a thing that I hope to do when I'm all said and done.