Surging Through Time (Scholarship Essay)

Hello, I would appreciate any comments or suggestions on how to improve my scholarship essay. I have passed the word limit by 29 words, therefore any edits that you think could be made will be helpful. Thanks again!

Prompt: We are interested in learning more about you and 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 helped you to grow?

thirty five minutes

35 Minutes.
"Please remain seated with your seat belt fastened," the voice over the intercom blasts through the cool air. My eyes instinctively squeeze shut, the fear of descending slinking into consciousness. My mind immediately transfers to two places are once, almost like a split screen: back home, where my parents are busying themselves with work and the destination, where my grandparents are awaiting my arrival.

30 Minutes.
I begin to travel back in time where the pungent aroma of Chinese food gathers in my nose. To grow up in such an environment, I have become accustomed to the busy nature and the infinite self-adventures. To my younger self, the restaurant served as a palace, where strength and bravery are limitless. My feet have carried me out to the possibilities of the world and continue to do so. In these explorations, I've instilled the greatest power of self-confidence that allowed me to pursue the thought of invincibility.

25 Minutes.
Through self-development, I realized that pen and paper became my solution for therapeutic relief. Words found their way into my mind and syllable by syllable, inked their meaning onto a physical copy of my thoughts. It's with writing that I discovered my deep passion for learning. There, I was determined to be the best story-teller, the best speller, and above all, I endeavored to excel in all areas of academics. However, here, I slide on an invisibility cloak and choose the booth in the corner to put my thoughts onto paper.

20 Minutes.
The truth was that the success of this business foretells my family's livelihood. Late at night, hushed voices blend quietly with the walls but soar loudly into my awareness. The past months have been horrible, I hear them say; the business is hitting its lowest peak. It's impossible to miss their strained faces when I bring up the back-to-school-fair or a spelling bee contest in which I was a participant in. I never understood why they never had time to accompany me to events; the thought of simply having no time never grasped to me. Without a college degree due to having to provide for the family, both of my parents moved to the United States in hopes of creating a family to better support their next generation of children.

15 Minutes.
It made perfect sense as to why my parents sent me to China to live with my father's side of the family when I was merely two years old. With a distinctive goal in mind, they believed they could create a more stable family without having me lingering in the back of their minds. For four years, I adapted to the Chinese culture that is now embedded into all aspects of me. In my parents' native country, I grew up knowing that despite the long, difficult days where my grandparents immersed themselves in arduous field work in order to support themselves and me, they poured every ounce of love and care to raise me.

10 Minutes.
The last time I was in China was the summer of '15. No longer naive, I knew real fatigue when I saw it. Every morning at the break of dawn, they left for a 45-minute walk to cultivate their foods. I joined them once, watching as they yanked the weeds from underground and tended their vegetables in the 90-degree heat. I slouched to my knees and extended my hands to help, only to have my grandmother pull me up, away from the dirt. Beads of sweat rolled down her face as the sun painfully hit her face, and I realized that this was not how they should be living their lives.

5 Minutes.
They deserved better. My parents deserved better. With this implanted into my mind, I knew that my personal goal was to make them proud; the only way to accomplish this was to focus entirely on education as it was something they never had the privilege of. Academics was something that I enjoyed and did well in, therefore I began to propel myself forward with every ounce of energy. I promised myself to commit to hard work and ambition, to reach for the highest star that my arms allow me.

0 Minutes
As I descend the steps of the plane and make my way into the airport, my neck strains to locate two faces in the sea of unknown. They find me before I do, crushing me into their warm embrace as my lungs attempt to fill the two years that I've missed. I realized that while dependent on my family, I can be independent as well: leading a club at school, volunteering around the community, and striving for the best as a scholar. To say that I have fully discovered who I am is simply not the truth. Instead, I continue to push to my limits and live in the moment, to persist in the discovery of new adventures and fulfill what makes my heart full.

Hi, I like your creativity, but to me the countdown format was distracting and to be honest, you did not really refer to it much in the essay so it doesn't even seem integrated very well into your structure. I do like the fact that you set your essay in a situation where you are literally traveling between the two very different environments in which you grew up. Maybe you can focus more on comparing and contrasting these environments and how each one has shaped your life, your aspirations and goals, and your growth. I think you did a good job in your 30 minutes paragraph in showing how your environment affected you, but the 25 minute paragraph did not seem as strong. What exactly drew you to writing? And I don't get the booth part - where is "here" and where is "there"? The airplane is what I thought first, but I guess the booth is in your parent's restaurant? Its not that clear to me. The 20 minute paragraph describes your parent's tough life, but it doesn't really connect that to your goals and aspirations and growth. Similarly, the 15 minute paragraph is pretty vague - what exactly are those aspects of Chinese culture that are embedded in you and how have they shaped your life and aspirations? Your 10 and 5 minute paragraphs finally get to your goals, but it seems to boil down to "I will work hard and be a success", which still seems pretty vague to me. The 0 minutes paragraph is a little more specific, but what clubs, what community activities? I still feel like I don't know that much about who you really are.

As far as word count, there are many places where you could condense your sentences and you have made some grammar errors here and there but I figured I would wait until a later draft to get into those details.

Jenny, this prompt does not call for a creative essay. This is a prompt that calls for a reflective presentation of your life so far. This is your summarized biography. There are aspects of your life that you have to focus on in order to deliver the requirements. First, discuss your parents and their aspirations in life for you. That will explain the context in which you grew up. Then explain how you were inspired by your parents and their dreams for you in a manner that shows how you formed your aspirations for yourself.

When you hit the academic discussion, think about who inspired you? Was it a teacher? A tutor? A classmate? A relative? Who inspired your academic success and why? If it is related to some awards and recognition, that would be even better. As for your challenges, these could be academic or personal in nature. This is the most reflective part of the essay because you need to look back on your hard times or the hard times of your family and explain how this helped you to get to know yourself better as you overcame the challenge. Did it teach you something about how you deal with challenges on a personal level? Or did you learn that family support is important when faced with a challenge?

All of the explanations you provide will help to explain the factors that helped you to grow as a child of the family, an individual, and a student. By revising the total essay and writing it in a straightforward manner instead of wasting word count with such trivial and unnecessary presentations like a countdown, you will be able to better meet the word requirement as well.