Undergraduate / U Michigan Setback essay ("departed from high school since graduation") [8]

I am a foreign student and need much critical feedback on grammar and content. And also please help me cut some words unnecessary. My essay way exceed the 500 words limit.

And it's kinda urgent for the deadline.

Please help me revise my essay. I will appreciate all of your great helps to me! Thank you!

Prompt

[A] Describe a setback that you have faced. How did you resolve it? How did the outcome affect you? If something similar happened in the future, how would you react?

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I was about to start memorizing the next two hundred words on my vocabulary list. Suddenly, the lamp went off, the noise of the refrigerator was dead, and even the streetlights stopped streaming through my window. A blackout fell upon the house. I spoke a word aloud, but no one in my family answered me---they won't back from work yet. I was home alone, always,

from day to night, from summer to winter.

Today was the two hundred and sixth day that I had been departed from high school since graduation, June 1st.

I had to be alone. As an immigrant from China in the October of my senior year, and as a Chinese student who could just barely speak simple English at that time, I postponed my college life in order to improve my English. However, this decision led undesirable consequences. Friends did not understand me; parents quarreled with me; relatives doubted me: some inquired me, and some felt disappointed and thought this child was destroyed. I not only departed from school, but also departed from my familiar world. I eventually began to question my ability to work independently without teacher and school. The world seemed to be collapsing around me.

The lonely journey started. I was anxious and uncertain, but I was also determined to prove not only to my family but also to myself that I can achieve my goal. I lacked textbooks, so I bought books from store and borrowed literatures in state public library. I lacked teachers to ask, so I sit alone at home to read and reread the passage, and I also memorized hundreds of vocabulary every day, from daily life words to literary words on Barron's 3500 word list, despite these words annoyingly haunted in my dream. I feared laziness, like the experience I had on long vacation before, so I arranged a schedule that detailed from morning to night, including the "classes" I took every day, and I also set up alarm clocks on cell phone to wake me up on standard school time... Suddenly do I realized that my electronic dictionary were left aside when I was reading, that I became no more stranger among native friends and they were willing to call me, and that I overcame the loneliness. I discovered the unique but right path to sail forward.

The ring bell of my cell phone pulled me back to the blackout. I picked up the phone and opened the door. The scene amazed me: in darkness, the candles lit by other families were blinking like beautiful stars, which I could never see at other normal electronically charged nights. So do my life. I consider the lessons that I gained from my lonely journey to be meaningful that I could not learn in bright school life. The loneliness taught me self-confidence to defend my choices and strive for my goal. By resisting doubts from my relatives and persisting in my path of studying English, I found my learning process more efficient that I could learn what I most need to improve. The journey assisted me in getting rid of idleness and acquiring strong self-control ability. Instead of sitting stably in the darkness, I now understand the importance of poking around the darkness to seek the beauty that hidden only behind a door. I will no more fear loneliness, but to continue this journey in the next six months to practice my English, and to recognize more hidden beauty in the darkness.