How my athletics reflects my determination

figure skating

Tell us about who you are. How would your family, friends, and/or members of your community describe you? If possible, please include something about yourself that you are most proud of and why. (maximum 250 words)

I began figure skating when I was seven. By eight years old I had competed in small, regional competitions. At twelve I was competing provincially and was training for four hours a day, six days a week, all year round. When I was in grade 10, I started feeling the pressures of academic success, and I started thinking about university. Training for competitions was time-consuming, and I wanted to try new things during my high school career. I still loved figure skating, but I decided to stop competing to focus more of my time on my studies. Although I missed the competitive aspect of skating, I found even more enjoyment in furthering my skills at my own pace. I decided to set a personal goal and achieve it. Instead of competing against others, I would be competing against my own abilities. I was determined to pass the two hardest skating exams, the gold free skate and skills test. Upon committing myself, I passed both tests in just over one year. I successfully achieved my goals thanks to my intense determination and perseverance. Growing up I was instilled with the importance of never giving up. If you were to ask anyone who knows me, they would tell you that I'm diligent, and there's no stopping me once I'm motivated. Along with being determined, I'm also responsible. I understand the importance of my education can find a happy medium where I'm able to achieve both my athletic and my academic goals.

@reneemvm
Hi there! Welcome to the forum! I hope my feedback is helpful for your writing endeavors. Best of luck in your application!

Remember that small details are critical to writing, especially if you're intending your work to be as formal as possible. For instance, the usage of appropriate punctuation when writing contributes immensely to how technically correct your writing is. You should also be cautious of having run-on sentences. Out of personal preference, these types of essays are better when they utilize more concise sentence structures because it helps minimize the possibility of misinterpretation in the overall flow of the text.

While I appreciate the insertion of mentioning your thoughts regarding the competitiveness of the field, I find that these types of statements can definitely work against you as well. When writing, bear in mind that you're looking at the overall opinions and thoughts that you're promoting throughout - therefore, the assessment is on the basis of the entirety of the text.

The concluding remarks also lack emphasis on values that you are associating with yourself. You merely mentioned that you're responsible enough - however, this wasn't a central message present all throughout your writing. Try to be more consistent to evade being illogical in writing.

@Maria
Would it be better if I reconstructed the last sentence and fixed some other sentences to make them more concise? The point of including that I skated competitively was to make the story make sense about how I took more time to focus on school while still completing my goals. Would it be better if instead I just included my accomplishments without the background story? And link that to how it demonstrates my determination?