Undergraduate / 'Safe environment to express myself' - Evaluate a significant risk Common app essay [9]

I know I have many grammar mistakes, please help me to improve them and also if you think of any good words I could use I would appreciate it.

I am open to ideas about improving my story. If you have additional ideas please include them.

words: 477
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Essay:

Three weeks seems to be such a short time. That is 28 days. 672 hours. 40,320 minutes. That is 24,119,200 seconds. Such a short time compared to a lifetime. But three weeks back in the summer of 2009 changed my life.

It was a time of self-awakening. I was in Cambridge for a 3-week English course. It was the first time I had ever been away from my family. Everything was great. I'd met so many people from different countries I had never heard of like Luxemburg, Kiribati and Vanuatu. We talked about our cultures and our countries. Most of my friends didn't think highly of me because I was from Iran. They had a fixed a image that I had a gun hidden under my skirt. The first week was full of people teasing me. I told my self they were just jokes and that they too knew that we weren't that different from one another. I held it in until the 8th day when a boy from France called me a terrorist in the middle of the common room. In that moment I forget who I was or where I was. Anger was building up inside me. I felt a hatred I had never felt before.

I had two options. I was either going to yell and scream every disrespectful word I knew and unload myself from this anger that was filling me up or I was going to walk away. It was not easy to choose. It was very difficult to resist temptation but I did it. I didn't say anything. I walked away.

I didn't understand the reason for this discrimination. There wasn't many dissimilarities between us. I was honest, humorous, good with my studies. I did sculpture, drawing ,photography. I even played piano better than most of the people in my age. Then it hit me. We all try to outcast what we feared. My friends feared me. After

I went back to the common room my friends apologized and told me they were sorry and that they would never disrespect me or my culture ever again. In that moment I realized we were starting to understand each other.

At the end of my 3-week course the French boy and me became best friends. We talked about our countries and exchanged information about our life style. In those three weeks I experienced happiness, sorrow and satisfaction like I had never before. Now looking back I know that was the best summer vacation I ever had and I am glad that I made every single one of 24,119,200 seconds count.

I hope my college life will be a safe environment to express my ideas, connect with different people and mature in both academic and social matters. A place to learn and respect people's individual perspectives and pass through obstacles to reach my goals.