Undergraduate / Passion is my favorite word. UVA Admission Essay [2]

I think it needs something more but I cannot determine what. Please help! If I made any mistakes, please let me know as well.

Prompt: What is your favorite word and why?

Passion is something one should always have in anything he or she does. One has to be passionate in everything, ranging from love to life to work to basically anything. Passion is my favorite word because it applies to any situation. For example, a relationship without passion is like life without love; it is still there, but something core is missing.

My mother used to tell me to do everything with all my heart. "You're doing it anyway, so why not do the best you can?" she used to say. In other words, I should be passionate about everything I do in life. That lesson stuck with me throughout the years.

My uncle is a very passionate painter and wanted to pursue that as a career. I could see the passion in his eyes whenever he held the paint brush. Unfortunately, in my home country, there are not many job opportunities in art-related fields. He tried very hard to pursue painting, but only got rejection in return. He eventually had to resort to a more realistic career choice to make a living. He goes to work every day and tries to fulfill his responsibilities, but I have never seen him be completely happy at his work. This made me realize that it is very important to be passionate about the work one does.

Undergraduate / My mother is an OPD nurse; UVA School of Nursing Essay - EXPERIENCE [3]

Please help me in bettering this essay. I feel that the vocabulary is not very intellectual and it does not stand out.

Prompt: Discuss experiences that led you to choose the School of Nursing.

Attending the hospital with my mother, an OPD nurse, had been a usual occurrence. I used to accompany her to her workplace back in Nepal, during my breaks. I could not go inside the operation theatre, but when she was in there, I would explore the rest of the hospital. My five-year-old mind saw a lot more of pink scrubs than white coats that tended to the patients. I remember being confused because I thought the people in white coats were the ones that the patients looked to for help. My mother explained to me that the "pink scrubs" were nurses and the "white coats" were doctors, and that they had completely different jobs with different responsibilities. I also remember telling her the nurses had many more interactions with patients than doctors.

When my school started and my visits to the hospital stopped, my mother would tell me a story of one of her patients' cases. Every day after I came home from school, I would look forward to that story, each one of which enlightened me. As I grew older and eventually moved to the United States, I started to realize that nurses have one of the most rewarding careers by seeing their patients recover in front of their eyes. My mother continues to work as a nurse currently and I still look forward to her story each day.