Undergraduate / UC: Rebuilding the Broken; I have always dreamt of learning how to play an instrument [2]

Prompt: 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?

Since I was young, I have always dreamt of learning how to play an instrument. I always admired those who can play the piano, violin or flute. However, the one instrument that caught my eye was an acoustic guitar. It had a beautiful sound to it, and just about every song can be transposed into one that includes a guitar. When I turned 13, I finally decided to take the chance to buy one, and so I did.

When I finally got my guitar, I was ecstatic and tried to begin playing and learning. I had no tutor or help so I had no choice but to learn it myself. Learning to play however was extremely difficult and there were many occurrences where I was unmotivated due to pain and family problems. Eventually, I would finally put the guitar down and not play it all.

Now, it has been about a year or two since I stopped playing my guitar, and still did not plan on relearning. Instead, I decided to try something new and tryout for the football team. Football tryouts were two weeks away and I had until then to be prepared. I decided to play tackle football to practice until conditioning and was doing well up until I heard a crack when an opposing player tackled me. The unbearable pain only told me that I had broken my arm and could no longer tryout. Eventually I relapsed about how I also gave up on guitar and felt that I could do nothing well other than academics. I felt depressed and apathetic as I was healing from my broken bone.

When I was free from my cast, it was summer vacation and all I did was lay down on my bed. For about a week I would just lie there and occasionally stare at my guitar that has been gathering dust for years. Then one day there was a sudden spark in me that made me want to just give learning to play the guitar one more chance. So on that day I picked it up, went on Youtube, and began to learn a song. Despite the pain I learned each chord one by one and whenever I felt like giving up, I would just tell myself to keep going over and over. After a long six hour session of constant strumming and learning chords, I finally learned the song. I played that same song for the rest of the night as it gave me joy to be able to play an instrument. It gave me the confidence to know that I can do better than just excel in my academics.

Undergraduate / 'interests by tutoring people' - UC Prompt #1 Essay: Meaning of Life [5]

Prompt: 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.

"What is the meaning of life?" is a question many ask themselves when they are feeling lost or unmotivated, or just curious as to what it may really be. Whenever I ask myself about life I turn to towards the people I look up to. Those people, my family, have helped me greatly in the struggles life has put me through and refined the person I am today.

Since I was young I lived a contented lifestyle. Nothing particularly bad happened as I grew up, however, I lived with a few siblings that have put in some personal struggles. When it was just my cousin and me, I had no problem living life. Additionally, throughout my years in up until now, I was always known at school as someone who was highly intelligent and helpful towards others as helping others was what made me happy. Although, I was cheerful at school, I had problems at home. As I gradually gained siblings, I felt like my parents began to pay less and less attention to me and more towards my siblings. Eventually the only time I felt any type of love or affection from them is when I came home with either A's on my report cards or special awards, which is part of the reason why I try so hard to maintain high grades. Otherwise, they would always just tell what to do and what not to do with life. So in addition to no affection, I also felt like I had no freedom to make my own choices.

I continued to pursue my interests by tutoring people in subjects that I excelled in such as math and science. At home I still continued to struggle trying to show my parents how well I did in school just to get even a minimal amount of praise. Then one day I was alone in the car with my mom and she continued to tell me about how my sister is in guard, and how she's so happy my other siblings are passing their classes and talked about how she was going to get them some food to surprise them for it. Eventually I just lost and went right out to ask her why she cares about them so much but, rarely ever talks about all the goals I have accomplished in life. She was silent for awhile, and asked if that's how I really feel and without hesitation spoke about how they usually don't show a lot of affection because they saw me as someone who has their life figured out and continued to talk about how they are always proud of me despite their lack of physical compassion. Hearing this made my heart skip a beat, and even my eyes welled up with joy. I never knew that they cared so much about me. As we drove up to our house, I apologized and thought, "How could I ever doubt them?" My mom said that there was nothing to be sorry about that it was partially her fault, but went on to tell me how they also believed I would be the most successful in life because of my grades and personality.