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"What would you do if I died?" Questbridge Prep Scholarship Personal Statement [2]
Personal Statement (650 words)
Please describe the factors and challenges that have most shaped your personal life and aspirations. How have these factors helped you to grow?This is a very rough draft I wrote today. The final needs to be submitted Wednesday. I am about 150 words over the limit so let me know what is superfluous or TMI. Please address any grammatical, conceptual, etc errors. I need some help with my conclusion as well. Also, does it flow well, answer the question, and capture your attention? Thanks a lot!"What would you do if I died," screams my mother.
She often says this to me, during our numerous fights. Those words trigger a visceral reaction in me. The pain and grief hit me like a slap in the face. My mind wanders to those awful things I had screamed at her earlier, "Why can't you just be like normal moms? Why can't you ever do things right?"
It wasn't always this way. We wouldn't always fight over the smallest of things, over a misplaced dishrag, clothes that we couldn't afford, food that was always scarce. My family was torn apart by immigration services. My dad was deported to China for not being an American citizen. He would be separated from my mom and me for over three years. During that time, my mother and I lived with no income. Mom had to beg our relatives to borrow money. We sank into debt as my mother's medical expenses also piled up. Even before that, my family had always struggled to get by because of mom's illness and inability to work.
Happiness and safety are but an afterthought when bills need to be paid but no one is able to. I constantly feel the weight of the enormous responsibility that lies on my shoulders. Sometimes, I want more than anything to shrug it off and be an average carefree teenager, but I know my mom needs me and I have to be her support. Even though my mother was wrecked by all these hardships and she is physically so weak, she is still the strongest person I know. Tears never fail to pool in my eyes when I understand how much she has sacrificed for me. The times are hard but I know that we will find a way to persevere.
I grew up in circumstances that provided me with the exposure to the experiences of being both a patient and a caregiver. I remember going along with my mom to her weekly doctor's appointments as a child. Doctors, then, became the people I placed my trust in and looked up to. Today, they emanated a sense of stability in the chaos and ambiguity that surrounded my life. During high school, I've had the opportunity to study the human body in detail. It fascinated me, whether it was about how cancer cells metastasize and take over the body, how electrical impulses make the heart pump, or how synapses fire transfer signals from cell to cell. I find it intriguing and exciting to draw connections between these concepts and the physical workings of the body. I want to be part of the stimulating field of medicine, where theory must be translated into practical practice. In the future, I hope to summon all my resources to pursue a challenging but fulfilling career in the medical field.
Throughout these significant changes that strip my life down to the bare essentials, I cling onto my education as an assurance for my future. When my mind is trying to unlock the meaning of a physics problem, unravel a complex poem, or understand cellular processes, I forget all the turmoil at home. All my energy is instead focused on working diligently to ensure that my future will be better than my present. I immerse myself in school; it is my safe haven. At school, I do not feel weak, powerless as I do at home. Knowledge gives me the power to change my life. When I was younger, I would think that life was unfair because it threw me all these obstacles and hardships. I now see that this situation has shaped me and the way I perceive the world around me. Poverty and illness entangled me in a web of problems, but it also gave clarity to the most important thing in my life, family, and helped me develop my aspirations for the future.
