Undergraduate / UC essay "fitting in" - 'I was lost in the crowd' [5]

Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

This essay is for the University of California LA and it has to be 500 words or less. Please tell me if my response answers the question. I would appreciate any feedback, suggestions, critique. Be harsh when grading this essay. Let me know if i show add more content or change anything, thank you so much.

My heart began to pound against my chest as it got closer. It was the first day of school, but this time it was different. None of the kids around me spoke Spanish. Since the very first word I said until the day I arrived to this country I had taken language for granted. It stopped, tears felt out of my eyes rolling over my cheeks as to wake me up from a nightmare with no result. Its door creaked when opened, the bus had arrived.

This was it. I took first step to a new life afraid of being that same old kid who never fitted in, but there was no turning back. I was going to go to a school were everyone spoke English, except for me. As I sat on my seat I turned my head and glanced at the window, behind it I found old memories fading away as the bus began to move. A new world was ahead of me, one in which I no longer had to be that insecure kid. I finally had the opportunity to change my path.

The bus slowed down and came to a stop. I walked off the bus and through the school doors, the ones that would seal my past. Maybe I was born in Guatemala to a poor family formed by a sixteen year old mother and a twenty two year old alcoholic and later violent father and grew up next to a respiratory nebulizer for eight years to survive asthma attacks but I left that behind when I stepped on the bus.

I was lost in the crowd, I studied my surroundings, reading the signs over and over again until I saw one in Spanish telling me to go to a classroom, I followed the instructions and ended up in A201. What I found inside was difficult to digest, kids from different ethnicities and skin colors smiling at each other, some speaking to another in the same language, I wasn't the only kid afraid of not fitting in. When I got out of the class I was no longer lost, this time I had my schedule in my hand. I walked to my first period class, without knowing I was already being classified, to my teachers I was Ever, to the rest of the school I was the Hispanic kid who didn't know English. That day I went home frustrated for not fitting in, ready to hide from this new world, but I couldn't be that scared kid again, instead I grabbed a book and began to learn English.

As the years went by with the help of great friends my accent began to sound more like one of the kids who once made fun of me. As far as fitting in goes I never did. I realized I didn't need to be like everyone else.

Undergraduate / 'hiding under my blanket' - UC essay "my father" [5]

Describe the world you come from - for example, your family, community or school - and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.

i would really appreciate your critique.

this essay is for the University of California LA and it has to be 500 or less words, mine only has 489 please let me know if i show add more content or change anything, thank you so much.

Life came back to me. In the fraction of a second light reflected in my eyes and darkness faded away slowly, feeble blurs started to become complex forms and shapes with shadows behind them to assure their presence. As I began to gain consciousness I noticed I was no longer around the person I was bounded to call dad. Instead I was in an airplane thousands of miles away thinking of how my mother would erase the memory of countless nights were I would wrap myself around a blanket before falling asleep and think of a world in which he did not exist.

This was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, but the joy of knowing I was going see my mother after seven long years of not feeling her maternity felt overshadowed by the thought of losing the person I once loved. This was the day I would gain my mother, the same day I would lose my father.

As the plane began to descent a pain in my chest filled with guilt made me stop thinking about my father as the aggressive and alcoholic self-centered man he was, instead I thought of the person I used to see as my hero, the person with whom I shared a few positive childhood memories. For a moment I cared about my father and though that maybe all he wanted for me was to be successful, maybe he didn't want me to be a taxi driver like him and telling me that I was not good enough was his way of saying it. I was being selfish thinking about myself while my dad was in a dark place waiting for he's life to end, but guilt faded away when I revived the moment my dad last spoke to me saying I was a waste, this pierced through my skin into my heart with anger and began to cry.

The airplane had landed. As I walked off the plane I realized that though I grew up hiding under my blanket hoping my dad would pass out, shaking as his voice with bitter stench approached my ears, and praying for each of his blows to be the last, there were many things I had to be thankful for, including a mother who gave up her right to raise me so I could have food in the table.

Five years later here I stand, remembering the last words my father said to me, thinking it didn't have to be that way since he survived that dreadful event; he had the option to change his life to be a better person. He did not, but I did. I no longer blame my father for my unstable childhood or contemplate how he could find pleasure in causing me so much pain; instead I use him as the foundation to show myself how wrong he was when he said "you are a waste."