Undergraduate /
B.U.- "This is me, and Boston is where I would like to be" essay : )) [4]
So I take it your three words are "enlivening", "compassionate", and "loyal."
Let me be restrained, not hypercritical, because your essay is requisitely well written and I like the subject matter.
Everything says the first paragraph can go. The three point format you seem to embrace can also go. All of the informal references can go.
Whether or not those adjectives accurately describe you, they are very strong ones to choose for this essay. As I said, the first paragraph must be cut or modified... since it only rehashes the prompt. I think you focus too much on the laughing itself in the second paragraph; tweak it to indicate the source of that laughter. The point format has never been my favorite but I think you do ok with it. Lose the informal mannerisms, no joke. Lastly, fix the grammar errors to tighten up.
This example illustrates the areas wanting work.
A noticeable characteristic of mine is one of contagiousness from my laughter.
So you're writing in a strangled sort of way and "one of" preceding "contagiousness" is unnecessary. Once you say characteristic of mine, you're setting restraints [using modifiers] that need to be observed and respected in the words that follow. "A" makes "one" useless, more importantly, awkward and incorrect. You already said it's of you, so how could it be of contagiousness from your laughter? Mistakenly, you're saying "of contagiousness from my laughter" as if it's a trait itself. You could always say "A noticeable characteristic of mine is one of a humble upbringing...pause... characteristic ... That further qualifies the characteristic so it's not only of you, but it ALSO belong to whatever category, but that is a different sense of the word "of."
The "of" you mean to use is for the sake of specific identity whereas the use I provided employs "of" in the sense so to indicate origin in a correct manner (without conflicting) with the first "of."
Contagiousness from my laughter is ambiguous for it is unclear what "contagiousness" entails, also because a contagion of good spirits does not rest in your control. If I cry wretchedly and people stop to stare, I cannot reduce a claim on how they react to package and present as a characteristic of mine. For those reasons (i.e. the sentence is overrun by errors) you should patch it up.
But all that precision is worth laughing over, overshadowed by the general kinks in your prose (strangled writing referred to just earlier), specifically your tendency to pass over the initiative, which makes for weak and awkward writing that spreads through and through.
Notwithstanding sporadic spurts of labored writing, this is a solid essay.
