Undergraduate / 'I attempted to start a conversation' - common app essay [4]

hello, please be brutally honest, I need to submit it by tonight.

This is the personal essay for the common application, I chose the option to talk about a significant experience in my life and its impact on me.

Does the essay show my personal qualities? Does it flow well? please be very honest!! I need good critique! thanks!! =)

It was a weekend when my mother told me. She called me to her and asked excitedly, "Would you like to live in the United States, Diana?" "No!" I replied. We had just celebrated Christmas at my aunt's house and memories of all the fun I had with my cousins lingered in my mind. "What about Silvanita?" I asked, growing more anxious by the minute. "Would she come with us?" I couldn't bear the thought that my cousin and I would be separated. Though the room was dark and quiet, light emanated from one corner where a bunch of flowers stood on the table. I gazed at them in an attempt to cast aside the worries that were rapidly filling my head and heart.

When we arrived in the United States, we were met by my dad and his brother's family at the airport. My cousin Miguel offered me some of his Goldfish crackers. Having traveled all day, I eagerly tried the American snack. In a second I was struck by how artificial and mass produced that little Goldfish cracker was. Thus began my first experience with "culture clash" - I would experience something new and my mind would instantly transport me back to Peru - to the many things that were familiar and natural to me.

As the new kid in school, communication and connection took on greater meaning than ever before. I would look at my classmates and know in my heart that we could be friends. But when I attempted to start a conversation, I became mute. My inability to speak English alienated me at a time when I desperately needed friends. In an unconscious effort to connect, I began to see those things that I longed for - a stranger would suddenly transform into a family member, buses turned into combis and the gray clouds were Lima's sky. My body was in Virginia but my mind and soul were still in Peru.

With each wave of nostalgia, my resolve to control my emotions grew stronger. I was tired of remembering places, people and moments that were absent from my new life. I decided that I would transform those details that made me different into strengths. Each night when the world grew quiet, I would lie in bed and write. Words of pain, fear, frustration and longing came crashing down, often accompanied by silent tears, onto the paper.

As time passed my love of writing emerged and grew stronger. Every night, regardless of the confusion and chaos swirling through my home, I would devote time to writing. I forged a space where I was free from other people's perceptions of me. Words like Latina, Hispanic, Immigrant, and Different shrank in size when compared to myriad alternatives that I could use to create my narrative. Courage, Empathy, Communication and Connection were words that repeatedly penetrated my heart and reminded me of my values as I worked to navigate high school.

"Al que quiere celeste que le cueste", my mother would tell me whenever I grew frustrated by life's challenges. "If you really want something, you have to work for it." I internalized this belief and wove it into the fabric of my life. The harder I worked, the more confident I grew in my abilities. I grew to love my English classes which gave me opportunities to present my writing before an audience. Conversations sprang up and suddenly I was no longer that girl who stood mute, frustrated and alone. I was a young woman who, through the craft of writing, had the opportunity to engage with others.

Undergraduate / 'The boy without a name' - William and Mary supplement essay [8]

Hello, I need help with this essay. I am trying to show that this event had a huge impact in my life and that I have learned not to take anything for granted because of it. In the past I have had trouble sounding arrogant, is that how I sound here? Is it long enough at 475 words? How can I improve it, I don't know if it is getting good personal qualities about me across.

Thank you so much!

Prompt:
Beyond your impressive academic credentials and extracurricular accomplishhments, what else makes you unique and colorful?
500 words or less.

I met the boy without a name the day I saw poverty for the first time.
At first sight, the boiling day seemed perfect. The soccer game was in full bloom, talented young boys were playing underneath the hot sun while their mothers cheered from the side lines. Upon a second look at the soccer-team sized group of young boys, the true poverty that reigned in my summer town of Iquitos, Peru shone through. The scene stopped me on my way to the small kiosk a few blocks down from my aunt's home. At first, I was impressed by the fact that these kids could run and play on a day doomed with intolerable heat. Wasn't the hot air choking their throats like it was mine? Now, I stood watching because the boys played barefooted on a dirt field polluted with gravel and possibly glass shreds. I watched because the mothers weren't just watching the game on the sidelines, they lived on the sidelines. Their homes made up of sticks and tarp. The boys played shirtless not because they were too hot, but because they had tied their shirts together into a round bundle they were using as a soccer ball. I stared because despite their obvious poverty and need, those boys gave the sun-bleached wide sky a smile I reserved for Christmas and Birthday mornings. My eyes filled with tears at the sudden realization of how blind and impossibly lucky I had always been.

I must have looked very odd standing there, because the little boy playing closest to the sidelines stopped just to stare at me. Despite my attempts to look away and continue on my way down to the candy kiosk, I was locked in place. His black eyes were petrifying me slowly and forcing me to bare witness to his condition. His skin, browned by the sun and resistant, clung to his bones making his shape into that of a child's skeleton. There was a pink scar running from his left armpit to a hidden spot beneath his shorts. His feet had obviously never been contained in shoes and his eyes embodied poverty. I thought I saw his mouth give me an arrogant smirk and he was gone, running down the gravel field at breakneck speed with the ball following his feet as if pulled by a magnet. From an impossible position too close to the sideline he kicked the ball toward the two water bottles that had been stuck into the ground and made a goal. The scream of effort that stumbled from his mouth as he kicked with all his strength engraved itself into my memory.

I will always be grateful for the boy without a name, he taught me to see all that I have and be thankful, so thankful, of the opportunities available to me.

Undergraduate / I am so tired William & Mary supplement essay [3]

Hello! I need help. The prompt asks to write about the topic of my choice and to make sure it is 500 words or less. This one is 378, is that a good length? Also, this is a first draft but I have worked on it really hard and need some help with advice on how to make it better.

Thank you so much!

I am so tired. The day this complaint sifts its way out of society will be a triumphant day for the history of man kind. Being tired was not a terminal disease last time I checked so it really should not be treated as such. If my teammates are counting on me to play at a big game, I can't let them down just because I didn't get much sleep the night before. That "I-am-so-tired" excuse doesn't count in my book, in fact, it doesn't even deserve the hundreds of times I am forced to hear it from my classmates in a single day. It is just something that we all have to deal with and, like a lady's time of the month, should be a taboo subject.

I can't imagine the devastation my family would've faced had my mother and father fallen into the easy trend of saying I am tired and thus excusing themselves from working hard. When we moved to the United States, there were countless opportunities for them to take the easy way out by using this phrase. Luckily, they knew better. In a world where it is easy to be lazy, they grasped the importance of working through the fatigue and earning a good living. They made sure to weave that concept into the quilt of my upbringing, scowling at or teasing me whenever I looked tired or stated that I was.

As I grew older and started to take more challenging classes, my days were plagued with the worn-out complaint. I am so tired, I would hear my friends say over and over. So what? I always wanted to tell them. So what if you are tired, just do your work now and sleep when it's time to sleep. I kept my mouth shut however, since saying negative things about a person's state usually brought on animosity.

There is nothing wrong with feeling a little tired. In fact, sleep is an inexplicable need manifest in all animals and any extreme sleep deprivation can lead to serious consequences for the organism. Allowing this feeling to become a substantial obstacle in every day life and using it as an excuse to give mediocre effort however, is a crime against oneself.