Hi, I need help revising me essay and anything you can offer would be great. I am applying for the QuestBridge scholarship and I don't know where else to go for help with my essay.
Essay Prompt: We are interested in learning more about you, the context in which you have grown up, formed your aspirations and accomplished your academic successes. Please describe the factors and challenges that have most shaped your personal life and aspirations. How have these factors caused you to grow? (800 words)
Summer
As I wake up today I know this day won't be much different from others. I know most kids will be excited to start the summer but I am not. With school no longer in session I don't have a definite meal coming my way, and when I don't eat that normally means neither will my mom. I know I can't sleep the day away so I get up and get ready. This day will be spent hunting for food banks or enough pennies, nickels and dimes to buy a pack of cheap hot dogs. Later that day I am exhausted, I haven't eaten yet so I use a trick I discovered recently on how to keep hunger away. I sleep. It's the best thing I can do for myself at the moment, the less calories I burn the less food I'll need later and the more money we can save to dig ourselves out of the whole were in. Maybe this is all just some unfortunate nightmare, as I sleep I think maybe I'll wake up and it'll be all better. I wake up. It's not.
Fall
School starts soon and I'm excited. Not just for the guaranteed lunches but during the summer I missed learning. I've missed the, "ah-ha!" moment when the reasoning behind a problem finally clicks into place. I've missed having something to think about other than my stomach growling. As I walk into my first day of high school, my backpack slung over my shoulder, I smile. Walking through the halls I realize I have been accepted into the best public high school in the state and one of the top schools in the country. I'm happy in this moment. For the next few months I breeze through school like a gust of spring air. My courses are challenging but I enjoy them and I have even made new friends. My home situation no longer bothers me as much now that I am not constantly surrounded by it. My mom even got a new job recently. I'm happy right now. Then my mom picks me up and from the look on her face I know I won't be for long. Something has happened.
Winter
Winter comes as I sit at my desk in school. Christmas break is right around the corner but I could not be less enthused. Fresh from the funerals I can think of nothing other than my cousins in their caskets. They looked peaceful, though the way they died was certainly not. One, after a long battle with illness finally succumbed to the sickness. Another, lying peaceful and still while family members try to claw their way to him and sob. His death is a mystery to us, but most have a general understanding of what happened to him. At the wrong place at the wrong time he was put into prison for one night and he never made it out. Beaten to death in the cells, by a guard or by an inmate we will never know. His mother kneels by his casket and sobs throughout the funeral, no one can move her. Finally, the youngest of the three, he is small and still. We all thought we would recover again. While on a night stroll he was gunned down and killed, shot where he sat in his wheelchair, a chair he was confined to after his last brush with death. He evaded it once but once was all he got. Now, as I reflect on the madness and grief that were their funerals, I realize at not one of them did I cry. I sat stoic and impassive in the pews, just wishing for the day to be over. Observing like an outsider looking in, I saw it all: the tears, the screaming and the misery reflected on every face I saw but I reacted to none. I know that I cannot cry for if I start, I won't stop. Now as I say goodbye to my classmates and watch them joyously run to their cars to start their vacations, it hits me that it what I want for both myself and my family. I don't want to fear every time we go to a relative's house, the only reason we're there is because someone passed away. I want to be happy to go home. I want to be excited to stay there, but at this moment I am incapable of that. To feel the joy my friends do I must first escape this state of sadness that I am in and the best way I can do that is to get out of this city, where memories linger behind every corner. My only way of escape is through college and to get to college I must be the best I can be in high school. That Christmas Break I read books and thought of a way to get us all out.
Spring
Spring comes and with it a new job for my mom. She now teaches a GED class for adults. Some days I go to work and help her. Sadly it is not the kind of work that pays well so it does nothing to stop us from being evicted. I pack up my room and say goodbye to the place that has been my home for the past five years. It is the longest we have ever stayed in one place and sadly it is time to go. As mom puts the last of our things in the back of the car, I look back one last time at the place that has been my home these past years and I tell it goodbye, I turn out the light, and walk away. We haven't been back there since. That night we sleep in our car, it's the first time we do this but not the last. Through all this I continue going to school and my mom continues going to work. I love my school and it's the best one I have ever attended. I look forward to graduation with my friends. As the spring and school year come to a close my mom and I move in with my aunt and her disabled son. Together we live in a house in an area that was hit hardest during Hurricane Katrina; the house had never been repaired after the storm. We live with roaches and mice but with my goal of college and escape in mind I can push through anything. This week I take my final exams and I do pretty well if I do say so myself. The school year is over and summer is looming right around the corner. Throughout the spring my mom and I look for our own place to live, we find a place in our price range but it is out of my school district, so we continue looking. We search housing add after housing add and find nothing we can afford other than the one out of my district. I realize we have to move and when we do I won't be able to go to my school again but I understand the apartment offers something that my mom and I need, stability, so we move once again. Once we move I come to love our little home and even though I can no longer attend my school I learn to accept it and move on. I enrolled in online school for the fall and keep my eyes locked on my goal of college.
9/6/13
Today I write this essay with hopes of being accepted to your program and given a chance at something great. I know I have the potential to be an excellent college student and a success story for this program due to my upbringing and the challenges I have overcome to be able to get to the point I am at right now, writing college essays. My life up until this point has been difficult but today I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and no matter what nothing will stop me from running towards it to embrace the day on the other end of this tunnel. I look forward to creating a future for myself and my family that will hopefully be bright and full of happiness. Thanks for listening to my story, it means more to me than you know.
Thank you for taking the time to read all of this. So what do you think???? Be honest.
Your essay is quite good! I am applying to Questbridge too and rite now I am hoping we both get in.However,I think it is a bit too verbose and I believe that you played up so much on hardship without giving in depth information as regards to how these all shaped your life. Otherwise, its top notch.Please check out my short answer essay on Questbridge as well and give a review.Thanks.
Hey thanks for your help! While I was writing it I was trying to avoid playing up the hardship too much but your right, I think I did go overboard. I'm going to start revising it today. I am also going to check your essay out right now. See you on your forum post next.
