Undergraduate / Close your eyes. Picture yourself in a classroom; Anomalous Alex, UC prompt 2 [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?"

Other than for simple grammar, any help at all would be great!

Anomalous Alex

Close your eyes. Picture yourself in a classroom filled with collaborating students at work. At one table, you see a group working together on a robot. At another table, you observe kids busy with their science projects. Everywhere, you hear the sound of numbers and equations, and see the magic of student engineers working as a team. Wouldn't you want to be a part of them? Wouldn't you want in? That's what the old Envious Alex wanted. He was so caught up with the collaborative feel of the math and science community that he paid little attention to which of the subjects he actually enjoyed; it was like someone admiring the look of a pair of shoes without concern for the function. Envious Alex tried to force himself into this group. He attended engineering clubs, and joined tech teams. But this didn't work. Why? Envious Alex just couldn't understand the language the others were using. "What the heck is an Autonomous mode?" he wondered. He had forced glamorous shoes on himself and could not walk in them. This ultimately resulted in Envious Alex's downfall.

Upon a journey for advice, The old Alex then stumbled across a good friend, Jake Lee, "The Mighty Wizard," so called for being a club president, and his excellent leadership others trusted. He definitely was Anomalous. "If only he could bestow his powers upon me." Envious Alex thought.

"If I did such a thing, you would ever more be wearing shoes that didn't fit you," replied this wizard. "Don't take my SketchersŽ, rather select a path to pursue, and then choose your shoes accordingly." In modern words, Jake the Wizard was telling Envious Alex to find his own way to excel, or something that he saw the most of him in; the collaborative community would follow naturally.

"Be unique, be... Anomalous!" cried that mighty wizard.
With the advice of the wizard, along with that of some close friends, Envious Alex underwent the transformation into me, Anomalous Alex, with all attachments to pretty shoes gone. Eager to try out his new powers, the new Alex searched not outside of himself, but inside, for paths to choose from. Nothing from before ever changed; the other students still walked their same paths and shined with their bright shoes. But Envious Alex was no longer, and I, Anomalous Alex did not focus on the fancy footwear.

Which paths did I then choose to walk? It varied throughout the years. I have once set foot on the path for animation, another time on a path for video game design and programming. For each path, I acquired the shoes particular for that job; I joined my school's animation team when I trekked the animation path, I joined a pre-college program at Digipen while I wandered the path for computer science and game development. The clubs and courses I now take in school are the shoes that are fit just for me; these shoes are to help me pursue my own path in engineering and computer science.

So would Envious Alex approve of Anomalous Alex's ways? Did the new Alex achieve the glamorous shoes that the old Alex had longed for? Maybe, maybe not; but the shoes that I wear now fit me perfectly- glamorous or not. This is what I learned when I took this new identity; the shoes you wear should only reflect the path you choose to walk.

Now, whenever I see another group of students working in harmony on a large project, and the ghost of Envious Alex marvels at their shoes, I turn to the old Alex and say "They are voyaging their path, and I shall voyage mine."

Undergraduate / WORLD OF COMPETITION ; World I come from [3]

Hi, I am a new user and I am trying to get some feedback on my UC essay prompt 1.
I am trying to differentiate from the commonplace style of "I am from this country where conditions are like this, and I have learned this."

I will take care of grammer, I just need some help for I have been told that my essay should answer the prompt more explicitly.

Thanks for help!

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.

Climb
It really hurts. My friend has climbed higher than me. He has conquered more of the mountain and is reaching for the summit while I'm behind eating all the rocks and dust in his wake. What am I then compelled to do? Climb faster! Surpass him and put him in my trail. He will respond and climb higher, I will do the same, each ceaselessly trying to beat the other. Stop! Now look down. Look how far we both have made it from the ground. See how much closer we both are to the summit?

I often find myself in a climb against my peer group. Everyone's trying to beat each other, attain a higher test score or finish an assignment first. Only when we stop and think do we realize that our contests have brought us all to a higher level, a win-win! That was my life at Kung Fu - going to practice every day trying to earn the next belt before my friend Jason did. This battle between us bought us our early belt promotions, and a friendship I'll never forget.

Another friend, Ian, and I both write songs in our band. We occasionally find ourselves in a battle over whose new riff the rest of the band wants to use, or whose song sounds better. But after swallowing my pride, I look at our band as a whole; we now have a whole album of original songs that we're having professionally recorded and put on iTunes.

So what do you do next when you are sitting with your friend high above the base of the mountain, finally understanding the mutual benefit of the race? Climb together! That's what Ian and I ended up doing after such a long competitive climb; we combined our musical riffs and worked on songs as a team while tutoring each other in physics, economics and calculus in our final climb together. Only this time, it is with compassion, not competition.

This is what I learned to value in a world filled with competition: being able to shake my friend's hand and tell him "The race is over. Now lets reach the summit together."