Undergraduate / 'different racial background' - Common App Choose an Issue of Importance [6]

Prompt: 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.

Hey guys, this is a rough draft that I just finished so there will be many things wrong with it haha, but if y'all could read and edit it where you see any errors, please do!

Also I was wondering if this would be a good topic to talk about (being thankful for what we have) for the prompt, because I was iffy when deciding what to write about...

Thanks for any help!

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Coming from a different racial background than most of my fellow classmates, I had a different view on many things that they unanimously perceived as normal. I still vividly remember the first time I saw my friend smell the food served in the cafeteria and say "Ewww, this smells like puke" and proceed to throw away his untouched meal into the trash can. For the rest of the day, I couldn't quite piece together why my friend would refuse to eat his perfectly good meal just because of the smell emitted. As any child would do, I asked my mom the second she picked me up from school that day. As an elementary school student, her answer was indecipherable to me, but as the end of middle school and early high school came around, her answer began to take meaning and soon changed my lifestyle completely. More and more acts with similar characteristics arose throughout this time period and the message my mom tried to give me as a second grader became very clear to me. Children crying in the grocery store because their mom or dad did not buy them their favorite cereal overpacked with sugar or the new fancy toy in the aisle. TV shows about a "Sweet Sixteen" birthday party gone awry when a birthday girl's car seats are pink instead of magenta. Fifth graders complaining and throwing a fit because their friend has a $400 cell phone and theirs was only $200. It all made sense to me, here we were in the "Land of Opportunity", where freedom is everywhere, where you can practice whatever religion you please, where you can say whatever you want to whoever you want, and these kids were still complaining about the smallest irrelevant details. The message that my mom was trying to get across to me as a second grader was that the boy was not grateful for what he had but greedy for more and for improvement to what he currently owned. This applied to almost every situation involving a begging or crying child, and even myself, as I did not know better growing up. What really bugged me was seeing the kids in far less fortunate situations such as those who lived in the poorer parts of Africa that actually faced real situations, compared to the kids throughout America. While we in the U.S. consider dilemmas to be buying a new car or buying a new home, their dilemmas consist of having clean water to drink or having a bare-minimum meal to eat. To be living in the most fortunate country in the world, we have to be thankful every minute for all that we have and stop looking at what we don't have.