I feel as though life has always thrown me lemons and asked me to make pea soup. Life and I haven't always gotten along and we've had our differences. I'm not one to dwell and complain about my past, but there used to be deep-seated animosity between life and I . I'm not going to sit here and complain on how life used to deal me awful cards. I never asked life to give me an abusive father who could not control his anger. I never asked for life to put me through poverty and wondering at the age of four if we were going to have enough food the next day. I won't dwell on the fact that my life wasn't full of my dad tucking me into bed and that instead if was full of me watching my dad push my mom around every time he got mad. I'm not going to be that girl who complains how she was dragged from Peru, to Japan, and then to America. I will not be the one to complain that because my parents were always working at the factory so we could survive another day, they ended up missing the first few years of my life. I will not lead a bitter life because I had to be independent from the time I could walk and talk, and never had time to just be helpless. I will not be the girl to complain how she didn't know what a bed was until the age of six. I'm not going to complain on how when I first arrived to America my family and I had to sleep on people's couches because we couldn't afford a place of our own. I'm not going to be the person who complains that their family went through an ugly divorce. I will not be the one to say that I hate my father for leaving my life for a year and coming back and pretending like nothing was wrong. No I will not be the girl to complain how she hates her father for not paying child support and telling my brother that he gives up on me and just doesn't want to talk to me anymore. No, I will not be someone like that because I'm the type of person who believes that the difficulties encountered throughout my childhood made me the strong women I am today. I am going to be the person who thanks the lord that my mother ended up meeting another wonderful man who I call dad. I'm the girl who is always smiling because she knows her family is stronger then ever. I'm the girl who feels as though living in three different countries is a blessing because I got to experience three different cultures. I'm the girl who is twenty-five percent Japanese and seventy-five percent Peruvian and proud to be different from the rest. I'm the type of person who rejoices about how great her step father is and knows that she will never be able to repay him for all he has done. I'm the girl who still calls her biological father on fathers' day and on his birthdays', even though she knows he doesn't deserve any of it. I'm the person who can't stop smiling because I'm so grateful that I don't have to worry anymore about where I'm going to live or what I'm going to eat the next day. I'm the girl who can now be a teenager and be able to make mistakes. I'm that girl with the loud laughter who loves life because life dealt her a new deck of cards which turned out to be the winning deck. Yes, its safe to say that life and I started off on a bad note, but life made up for his mistakes. I think that Horace Bushnell got it right when he said "The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be." My life has inspired me to work harder and it's taught me to never give up because the past is the past and the future is a present.
Are you using this for your commonapp essay?
I'd advise against you doing so, as the essay is extremely negative. I realize that you make it positive towards the end, but your negatives outweigh the positives, especially since the negs are placed in the beginning.
Cut down on the negatives, add more positives and make it not about how these events occured but HOW it affected YOU
I don't know exactly what to say but i'll try.
First indent more to make the passage easier to read and not confronting, second try tot use a more empowering tone rather than a defeated one and reveal your triumph before you list the adversities you've endured.
I don't know iff you should use this for common app or not because it kinda sounds like you're getting alot off your chest but on the other end it forces someone to feel sympathetic and is later empowering. (btw please!!!!!!! edit my yale engineering supplement)
Thank you for your input :) I agree, I think I did need to add more of how its affected me, so far I've added:
All the things that I've encountered throughout my life has made me the person I am today so ironically I grateful for the things that have happened. Throughout it all I've become a hard worker because I know I never want to go through poverty again. I always strive for better because I've seen the look on my parents face when they couldn't give me the best of life. I'm proud that I'm fluent in Spanish and that I can remember a bit of Japanese. I feel as though I'm the luckiest girl because I was able to see different cultures, and the people behind it. I got to live the life of a Peruvian girl, a Japanese girl, and now the life of an American.
Am I on the right track?
