Undergraduate / Spain. The country where I grabbed ahold of every opportunity offered to me and discovered who I am [4]

Anything you guys see here that you could help me out with? I am applying to some pretty prestigious schools and please be BRUTAL be CRITICAL whatever you want!! Thank you!

Spain. The country where I grabbed ahold of every opportunity offered to me and discovered who I truly am. As a sophomore, I decided I wanted to go beyond the path the typical American high school student would follow. The thought of being in the exact same place for the rest of my high school career was tiring to me. I wanted to experience a new learning environment and expand my perception of the world. I figured the craziest and toughest way to do that would be to move to a foreign country and study in a totally different school. I would assimilate into an unfamiliar culture and become fluent in a brand-new language. To me the idea was intriguing and exhilarating.

And that far-fetched idea was the first step of my journey. A journey with AFS exchange programs that led me places I never expected to go. Spain isn't the perfect country nor is Spanish the perfect language. I didn't travel to Spain expecting perfection. I knew I would have to overcome many challenges and deal with many stressful situations. In my first four months, I had some of the most intensely emotional moments of my entire life. I had to cope with knowing no one, in a completely new city and country, where I wasn't even able to communicate with others in a common language. I trusted my host family with my whole heart as they had been so accepting of a foreigner in their home and they had so much of the language and culture to teach me. In December however, they decided the situation wasn't what they had expected and my host mother told me I was no longer welcome in their home.

That situation was absolutely crushing to my entire being, and being so far from my American family and friends and everything familiar to me didn't make it any easier. But in the end, it was this experience that completely transformed me. I learned to be independent and create my own happiness, even when no one else was around and it seemed impossible. I also learned humility, as many times I had to listen so intently to conversations to just follow what was going on. I couldn't contribute much to conversations, so I learned how to really listen. And life swirled on, as another wonderful Spanish family in a different city took me in, and I was able to continue my personal growth in my Spanish life. Even though those two weeks during Christmastime when I was basically family-less were heart-wrenching, my only plan the entire time was to not give up. I had come to Spain with such a deep sense of purpose and hopes for the ways my life was going to be changed and the person I was going to become. I refused to give up these hopes.

Living abroad put me on the outside looking in. It was a unique experience to be on the margins of society. It was a temporary situation, but certainly not always easy. My time on exchange changed my perspective on life: the way I see other cultures and languages, the way I see Europe and the world, and my understanding of other ways of life. All these views were revolutionized. Being the outsider let me grow and mature throughout my year. Now, equipped with a new worldly perspective, I feel more capable than ever to take the next step and head into college internalizing all the lessons that I learned in Spain.