Undergraduate / ART- UMass Lowell - What do you do in your spare time? [5]

Hey guys, this is my essay for admission in Spring Semester to the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. The topic is "What do you do in your spare time?" Any feedback whatsoever is greatly appreciated.

I still remember when one of our neighbors had taught me how to draw a cat. I was around 4 years old then, and I must've spent about a hundred sheets of paper just drawing the same cat over and over and showing it proudly to anyone and everyone. It was around that time that my passion for drawing flared up.

In the next few years, I drew almost constantly. I would draw cars, animals, buildings, anything, really, so long as it got a pencil or crayon into my hand. My grandmother still has a box full of my 'artworks' from those years.

The passion is still there, but over the years, the time and motivation has decreased somewhat. As my skills slowly improved, and I began to realize what my strengths and weaknesses were, it started taking me longer to come up with an idea to draw, and the time gap between my drawings increased. That is, until I found out about paint.net, and got into digital art.

It's much easier to come up with something to make using the free computer program, and I spend a lot of time playing around with the effects and coming up with backgrounds for my desktop. With time, I've become quite adept at it, and I'm even thinking of starting an online gallery.

However, art isn't the only thing taking up my free time. About three years ago, I started writing short stories, ranging from one to a few pages long at the back of my notebooks in between classes. As it developed from 'something to do when you're bored' into an actual hobby, the length of my stories increased, and now I'm working on a story that already has seven chapters. Over time, I found that this hobby helps me to relax, as well as to express myself. I have a somewhat shy personality, so that is very important to me.

I know I'm not the most sportive of people, but that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy playing sports. I have been playing soccer (well, actually, kick-abouts with a soccer ball since it's hard to come up with eleven-player teams in the small neighborhoods we've always lived in) ever since I was nine, and in my last few years of high school, I started getting into tennis as well. Now that I have half a year of free time, I am about to enroll in some tennis courses.

My other hobbies include playing video games, browsing through random sites on the internet looking for some catchy tidbit of information, learning about 3d modeling and computer programming, and, like pretty much everyone else, listening to music. I particularly enjoy finding new singers and bands to listen to, and that has influenced my taste in music a lot. I have been a fan of contemporary Russian music, I have been a Michael Jackson fanatic, I have been a huge fan of Italian pop music, and currently, my taste seems to have settled to rock music, with my latest 'newly discovered' band being Muse.

I know I seem to have a lot of hobbies, but that's because I seem to have lots of free time (although more often than not that's because I've forgotten about something I'm supposed to be doing), and I'm constantly searching for even more stuff to add to the collection. After all, who knows, maybe carpentry is more fun than it looks?

Undergraduate / From Ukraine to Ghana; Richmond University Supplement [5]

Tell us about an experience in which you left your comfort zone. How did this experience change you?

Big Changes

My family made the move from Russia to Ghana in early 2003. My dad, who is Ghanaian, came back a few months earlier, to find a job and settle. Obviously, it was a huge change for us, who had never been to Africa, and, as expected, we faced numerous challenges, most of them having something to do with adapting to a new culture, a new diet, a new environment, a new climate, etc.

However, what really made me feel like a fish out of water was the language barrier. It was a little better for my mom, who could carry on her end of the conversation until people started using complex words like 'obvious,' but for me, it was horrible. The most complex English sentence my 7 year old self could construct was 'The cat is walking.'

Consequently, I became isolated from everyone around me, except my family and the family we stayed with for the first 4-5 months in Accra, but even that was because they'd lived in Russia before. My situation was so bad I couldn't even go to school for half a year, since I wouldn't have understood anything anyone said to me anyway. We had English teachers in Russia, and we even got a private teacher for the last 3 months, but what I learned was so basic, and the difference in the dialect of the locals and my teachers so great that it really didn't help at all.

I began to learn English through my Russian textbooks. We had textbooks for class 1 through 4, and I spent many hours learning through them with my mom. However, I found, as most people do, that learning a language from textbooks isn't really helpful, especially when those textbooks focus on theory. I learnt and learnt, but only improved ever so slightly.

Having basically nothing to do except for learning and going to the beach, I started reading storybooks. We had brought a few of them over from Russia, and I decided to put them to use. Soon, I was done with all of them, and was asking for more. So, we went out, and bought some books in English, which I also read. I started to enjoy reading English books. And then, I suddenly noticed that my English was becoming better. As I read more and more storybooks, and familiarized myself with the ways of the English Language, I began to incorporate this into my speech, and pretty soon, I was speaking English better than my mom.

By the time I was in fourth grade, I was reading books, which my mom read in weeks with a dictionary in hand, in just a few days. My English had become good enough for me to go to school and socialize normally with the other kids. In fact, I was getting so good that I could even recognize mistakes that adults made, and I was outscoring most of the students in my class, even though I was always one of the youngest people there. In class 8, I was even nominated for the Spelling Zee, in which I placed 6th in the Northern Region, just one spot away from the Nationals.

Looking back at all this, I am grateful for having gone through this experience. I think that it has helped me grow as a person, and gain confidence in my ability to adapt to different situations. However, what I treasure most about this, is that it helped me develop my hobby of reading, and consequently, writing. I can't even begin to imagine how many hours I've spent reading storybooks over the last few years. I enjoy losing myself in the different worlds presented to me by the books' authors, and I have developed a passion for trying to create my own fantasy world, which may someday captivate other readers, in the same way that the worlds I read about captivated me.

Hi guys, I need some feedback on this essay. Any feedback at all (even one word) will be appreciated, thank you.

Undergraduate / Is literature the best way to overcome death? - Amherst Supplement (q.2) [4]

"Literature is the best way to overcome death. My father, as I said, is an actor. He's the happiest man on earth when he's performing, but when the show is over, he's sad and troubled. I wish he could live in the eternal present, because in the theater everything remains in memories and photographs. Literature, on the other hand, allows you to live in the present and to remain in the pantheon of the future.

First variant:

Many famous people seem to take literature as a way to keep themselves remembered, even after they're gone from this world. Maybe it's because I'm not a famous person, maybe it's because I've not reached the stage in life when such things really plug themselves into my mind, but literature does not hold that kind of meaning for me.

I have read lots of books in my life. I immersed myself into their worlds - each one different yet similar to the other, each one with its own special ingredient that makes me not want to return to the mundane world of everyday life. Somewhere along the way, I decided to try writing my own story, and soon I became just as entranced in writing my own stories as I was in reading those of other writers.

For me, writing is a way of releasing tension and escaping from the world around me. When I write, I concentrate only on my writing, and I feel as if the whole world with all its problems floats right past me. I enjoy immersing myself in the worlds which I create from my imagination, taking my seat inside the mind of a character, and viewing the world from his or her eyes. I try to always let my characters write the story, instead of letting the story write the characters. This makes every story I write a new adventure.

That's not to say that I do not seek the appreciation of others in my stories. It's just that, for me, having just one person read it and tell me that it's good is enough. I guess this is because the main reason I write is because I love doing so, and everything else, including appreciation of the story, is a secondary pleasure.

Second variant:

There is a certain kind of magic in books. They are able to transport you to a different world, a world with no limitations, a world where your fantasies take shape, and your imagination is the only thing holding you back. Books make you lose yourself in their world, and forget about all the difficulties and absurdities of the world in which you live. A book is 'run' by the reader's imagination as much as it is by the writer's words, and that is what makes books so special.

Theater and films, for that matter, are different. Sure, they can also show you a different world, but the possibilities are limited to what can be produced on stage. They engage the viewer's vision rather than the imagination and thus are both repetitive and, in most cases rather dull for long stretches. Moreover, theatre and films do not give you an insight into the minds of the characters as much as books do. This makes it difficult to sympathize with the characters.

If I were to choose a way to keep myself remembered, and the two choices were literature and theatre, I would definitely choose literature. Books can be held, passed on, re-read over and over, and each time, the experiences you've had in life would make the journey a little different.

However, I believe that there is no way to really overcome death. When you read a book, or watch a film, what remains isn't the author's name, but the contents of the book. Thus, what actually overcomes death is not the writer, but the words the writer used. That is why, when I write, I do not aim to preserve my name, but rather to enjoy myself as much as possible, and hope that my readers do the same.

-Do I need a title for the essay?
-I need to know if the essay actually answers the question properly... I feel as if I need to include the theater aspect of the question in my answer.

Any other feedback will also be highly appreciated. Thank you.