Alone at home. This is the Intro to a very personal UC admissions essay.

Is it too depressing? Should I continue?

Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?

overcoming social anxiety

As a kid, no one was ever home. My dad moved permanently to utah following a mid-life crisis, my sister whom was much older, left for college when I was seven, and my mom who hated being at home, worked a night job. After school, my mom would take me home, and immediately leave for work. For a long time, my average day consisted of eating frozen dinners, watching judge judy and playing online arcade games. That didn't bother me too much. What hurt the most that there was absolutely no one to talk to. This prevented me from developing healthy social skills. At school, I would say whatever I was thinking, regardless of how rude or sensitive. After offending nearly everyone in the sixth grade, and being ostracized for it, I started avoiding talking all together. I reasoned that I wouldn't be criticized if I simply didn't talk.

My most significant challenge was overcoming social anxiety.

Foo, this is a severely under developed response essay. You have 650 words to present the introduction to the challenge, the effect of the challenge upon you, and how you overcame it. Each aspect can be covered in 2 paragraphs each because of the word allotment. So you can still develop this essay in terms of discussion points. You have a pretty good start to the essay. I am assuming that this is only the draft of the opening paragraph and not your actual response yet. I need to read how you overcame this social anxiety that you felt. Describe how it affected you emotionally and socially. Then discuss your turning point. What brought it on? How did you cope from that point? When did you realize you had overcome the social anxiety? How are you now? What lesson would you say you took away from that period of your life? Your response to those questions should help you to create a more significant response to the prompt.

@Holisuna
Hello! I think the essay opens interestingly, with telling the reader about your childhood. I think the introductory paragraph is all right, and don't hesitate to talk about something which really has changed you; however, what most of the people sometimes do is, they go on to talk about the problem so much that they forget to focus on the main idea of essay: how it has changed you? How do you connect with people and world around you now. Also, please focus on the steps you took to overcome the social anxiety--the pitfalls, in those, and successes etc. I hope it helps.

@madiefarts123 How would you suggest I improve the intro paragraph? Is there anything I should delete or revise?

Thanks for the feedback guys!

@Holisuna
I don't think that you need to change anything in your intro paragraph, but I'd suggest that don't waste many words on telling the story because the essay is maily about 'how that incident changed you'. Focus more on that bit. I think its clear now?

@Holisuna
You still have a lot to develop on your essay. I think your paragraph is just fine as an introduction. However, you didn't talk about the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge ans how has this challenge affected your academic achievement?. Those are requirements on your essay that you should not left behind, right now you essay only tells me about your problem but nothing about you. How did that shaped you? What did you learn? How did you overcome social anxiety? Does it still affect you? More than knowing about the challenges you have faced, the admission officers want to know how did you answer those challenges.