I feel like I did a good job on this, the only potential issues I'm seeing are the opening and closing. I think the content is good, maybe just a change of wording here and there could be used. Look over it, and tell me what you think!
One of the principles of Villanova, as an Augustinian university founded on the teachings of St. Augustine, is that students and faculty learn from each other. As you imagine yourself as a member of the Villanova community, what is one lesson that you have learned in your life that you will want to share with others?
After coming home from school and doing practically nothing at the beginning of my freshman year, my mom urged me to start joining some clubs in order to keep myself occupied. She had gone through a list of all the organizations and activities present at my school and circled all the ones that she thought I would be interested in. I glanced at the list, and immediately rejected her idea. I didn't know anybody who was in these clubs, which meant that they were all "weird" in the eyes of my naĂŻve freshman self. While I did join the local youth group and continue to play soccer, my extracurricular activities remained fairly insignificant for the remainder of the year.
Sophomore year, a friend of mine who was a prominent member of the school's FBLA chapter convinced me to join the club and participate in that year's competition. Thinking back to my mother's attempts during the previous year, I decided to go out on a limb and join. I entered the regional qualifier for Computer Problem Solving, and to my surprise I came in first and would be participating in the state-level competition! The next level of testing consisted of an overnight trip to a nearby hotel along with the other members of FBLA from my school who had qualified as well. After spending the night at the hotel with these people, I realized that they weren't weird at all, but they were just like me!
Finally over my reluctance to becoming involved, I was finally able to become an active member of my school and community. Since then, I have had a job for over a year and a half, done an internship with a congressman, participated in school sports, been voted into Student Council, and become involved with a few other organizations. None of this would be possible had I not decided to join that first club, which completely changed my mindset heading in to the next few years of high school. Everyone should step out of their comfort zone every once in a while, because you never know what you could miss.
After coming home from school and doing practically nothing at the beginning of my freshman year,
After doing practically nothing after school at the beginning of my freshman year, my mom...
Please don't take offense, I'm merely looking at this from a potential AdCom perspective.
I'm not sure that it's a good image to paint that you 1) didn't take the initiative to find something to do 2) your mom had to force you
While this is about getting out of your comfort zone, maybe focus only a little bit on being pushed outside of your czone and more about what it taught you. You apparently have accomplished a lot since joining that one club. You don't come off so great after reading your first paragraph. While you have done a lot, you're not doing any favors by starting out with saying you were lazy and your mom had to get you to stop.
