Undergraduate / SHOPPING IN THE GROCERY STORE - tortured by choice dillemmas [6]

Hi, I am an international student from South Korea and English is my second language. Can anyone help me with my grammar? I know it's really bad and some sentences probably don't make any sense. Also, do you guys think that my topic is good enough? does it relate to the question? I just want to tell a story about how I was able to find my inner values and beliefs as I became independent.

Thank you

Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family:

An hour passed since I have been standing in the dairy section, trying to decide whether to get sharp cheddar or mozzarella. This kind of debate in my head tortured me every weekend. For the past three years, I have been living in the corner of the living room of my sister's one bedroom apartment. My parents in South Korea thought it would be better for me if I moved in with my sister who was already studying in the United States. Since she spent most of her time studying in the library, little things like cleaning the house to big things like paying the bills were my duties now.

Grocery shopping wasn't an exception. Every Saturday morning, I would get my purple grocery bag and walk to the grocery store two blocks away. Sure, grocery shopping can be troublesome, but this is not the reason why I hated grocery shopping.

I hated it because I spent all my Saturdays in the grocery store. It took me more than thirty minutes to decide how much fat my milk should have. I needed to go around the store at least 3 times deciding if my bread should have poppy seeds or not. Passing by the yogurt section? Don't even get me started.

The indecisiveness got me worried - not just because I couldn't decide what kind of cheese to get, it's because this affected my daily life, too. Writing a two page persuasive essay was harder than writing an 8-page research paper. Picking a side in a debate class was more aggravating than taking a test. I kept running away from making decisions as I lost confidence in myself.

It took several months as I thought deeply about what was wrong with me. I realized the problem was that I didn't know about myself. In South Korea, I was so acclimatized by other people making choices for me. I'm not saying that taking advices from others are bad - it's just that I depended on them so much, that my inner self were slowly decaying. My identity was lost as I avoided the opportunities that could have shaped who I am.

From that moment of realization, I decided to take a step back in life and started to find my inner self. There were so many questions to answer: Who am I? Why am I here? What are my real goals? And what do I believe in? I tried to answer these questions by carefully paying attention to every decision I made. For example, picking out a laundry detergent made me realize all the hard work that my parents did to raise me and that I took it for granted. From that moment, the respect for my parents and the importance of family became my center value. When I picked my courses for my junior and senior year, I learned that I have a passion for science and math, and want to have a career in that field. When I decided to run for the election of the captain of the WYSE (World Youth Science and Engineering) team in school, I found out that I enjoy competition and love to challenge myself. Thousands of choices I made over three years developed into a forest of beliefs and values that helps me to be independent. Now, it only takes one circling around the grocery store to find what I like. If my sister doesn't like what's in the fridge, then she will just have to deal with it.