'blind to many of the things' - someone who has made an impact on my life

"Get in the room!" Oh! That dreadful call that forewarned me of a brief, yet painful experience. Doing anything from writing on the walls to hitting my sister would be followed by one of these experiences. After hearing those four dreadful words, I would slowly follow my dad into The Room with my eyes focused on the back of his head. As ritual, I would position myself beside my parent's bed. The time it took as I watched my dad disappear into the closet to get the belt felt like the longest thing I had ever waited on in my entire life. It was often that I went through this process in which I loathed. However, nowadays, these spankings do not bring sorrow to my heart. However, they have brought to me a responsible attitude and gratefulness for the man who I am now proud to call my father; the man who refused to let me be a rotten kid. Because of the man who he is, I now am able to understand his immeasurable wisdom and incomparable determination to do what is right. I admire my father for the lengths he will go to in order to help me and teach me what is right and how he efficiently carries out his responsibilities.

As a child, I was blind to many of the things he did to help me. For example, when I started playing baseball in a League not too far away from my house, I was terrible. My dad took out time in his day to spend countless hours with me either in the backyard or at the baseball field. Those practices with my dad taught me the basics of the game and in essence have paved the way for me to become an outstanding baseball player. I can now proudly say that instead of spending a lot of money trying to increase my skill by playing on select baseball teams, I've become a skilled player simply by training with my father. The Bible says in Proverbs 13:1: "A wise son heeds his father's instruction, but a mocker does not listen to rebuke." Not a day goes by where my dad does not try to share some of his wisdom with me. I choose to listen to this Bible verse and heed my father's instruction, whether he's helping me learn the basics of the game of baseball, teaching me valuable tips on heating up a can of chili, or helping me set up a study routine to score higher on the SAT test. His wisdom, in almost any topic, is so deep that what he is saying should not be taken lightly and I would only be doing myself a disservice if I chose to disregard the advise of my dad

Why, some time ago, after I had returned from an outing, I heard his voice calling my name. The moment was intense. "What could he be calling me for?" I asked myself. No more must I wonder where he is calling from for he can always be found in the same room. The issue of importance that afternoon was not convicting, but demanding. He talked to me about reading, he talked to me about writing, he talked to me about studying; it was all about college. But the true meaning of why he called me into his room came out as I neared the end of my visit. "A man needs a conviction" he told me. "You have to find what you believe in and pursue it no matter what." This may not sound very motivational to the average person, but he knew, when he said it, that it would speak to me, deeply. This is why I have made him my role model. I watch him, day by day, put countless hours into completing his responsibilities which creates the basis of why I respect him so much. Aside from the fact that he is, of course, my dad. Every morning, when I wake up, I find him sitting in his office taking care of another piece of business needing to be dealt with. I can't think of a time when I've seen my dad do something without reason. Everything he does is credible and everything he says is meaningful. What I am required to do is listen to what he is saying and take hard nosed action on it .

These days I find it much easier to get along with my father. Not because I have become accustomed to his lectures nor because I enjoy them, but after going through a few phases of maturity I can now look past any shortcomings he has and focus on grasping the message that he is trying to convey. Now that I look back over the years, I realize that my dad wasn't doing too much. He was doing just enough. Unlike the children in many households, the children in his house were not heavy troublemakers. My sister and I were and still are well behaved and I believe we have come very close to what he has trained us to be. I am grateful for the new perspective that I have recently began to view my dad through. When I look at him I see a responsible, organized, wise man. The many times that I've caught myself repeating something he has said or doing something he has done has caused me to believe that I have picked up some of these characteristics through him and I hope to lead my future household with the same manner of discipline, instruction, and wisdom in which my father has lead his own. Though I've been able to show you a bit of how life is with my dad, the things that I continue to learn through a relationship with my father are simply too many for words.

BE AS MEAN AS YOU NEED TO!!! PLEASE CRITIQUE!!!

the thing i wanted to bring to ur attention is the belt thing. it may not be wise for u to mention it as a way that ur dad has made u a better person b.c. i think its like debated that getting a "beaten" doesnt rly help children learn. its a one time thing. what helps them more is taking things away. ]

so you may wanna take that part out of ur essay. just a suggestion :)

oh okay that's understandable. but the essay sounds okay? as far as attention holder, content, readability...etc.

well, one key thing about these essays is that although the prompt says "someone that influences you" they really dont care to know about the person and they still want to know about you.

i do not feel as if you have told enough about yourself. maybe, for example, if you can expand on the baseball thing. talk about how terrible you were and how your dad helped you. make sure you manage to focus on YOU.

i feel as if by the end of these essays, colleges want to find out something about you. i dont feel as if youve done that. uve just told us a lot about your dad only. DONT FALL FOR THE TRICK!

good luck!

Ok first things first. Your introduction...oh boy. Your dad whipped you with a belt when you were bad? Maybe you should choose a different way to express how unrelenting your dad is because child abuse isn't appealing to admissions unless your going to show how it shaped your life. But the lashing didn't shape your life, your dad did. Your just trying to use irony here.

It doesn't feel good to know you're about to die, or almost. The last step of this long process was the flogging which featured marks instantaneously being made all over my body lash by lash. I often went through this gruesome process with the man who I am now proud to call my father.

Yeah...What's even worse is you called it a "ritual" as in...it ALWAYS HAPPENS. O.O

Let me give you your intro right now in a nutshell. This is what it sounds like to me.
My dad often whipped me when I make mistakes. I thought he was psyco but came to accept that he's an ok whip-weilding crazy man.

I know what your trying to do here. Your trying to say that even though your father is not perfect, he still teachs you life lessons.

tal105 is completely correct, your essay talks only about your dad. I want to see YOUR journey to become what you are today and how your dad helped you along that path.

Right now the only change in you is:
Before I thought my dad beat me without reason.
After I realised that my dad is a good guy.

Maybe you did something terribly wrong when you were little and your dad taught you to bypass your mistakes and become a great person. That's a legit intro.

You only give examples of how your father taught you and not how you reacted!!! How you changed!!!

Good luck.

Oh, dear. I'm very sorry that, in addition to beating you, your father brainwashed you into believing that the abuse was for your own good. My guess is that this is something you will struggle to make sense of for some years to come, having many different thoughts and feelings along the way. So, I'm going to have to agree that this is not to topic to choose for this essay. Choose somebody else, somebody who was kind or at least not hurtful to you. Perhaps a teacher or -- here's one that can work well and is not often chosen -- a friend.

Also, it seems as thought in this essay you are constantly listening to your father. Your essay really takes away from your sense of individuality.

Well, I rarely find myself at a complete loss for words, but it is difficult to know what to say here. The prompt asks you to talk about someone who influenced you, and you correctly realize that the influence you mention should be a positive one, as you need to use the essay to highlight your own positive traits. However it is possible to learn from adversity, so I see no reason why the person you talk about had to be good to you.

That said, your chosen topic just doesn't work very well, as pretty much everyone else has already pointed out. In part, this is because the most compelling, detailed narrative is the one you start out with. That sort of punishment would widely be considered abuse today even if you had done something to deserve being punished by your parents. But you don't even give the reader that context, and so it seems as if it was a abusive ritual carried out regardless of your own behavior. The descriptions you give of the good things your father did don't have this level of detail, and so can't really balance out your opening narrative.

Beyond that, it is admirable, I suppose, if you have managed to forgive your father for what he did, but you go beyond this, and actually condone his actions. And this is really why the essay doesn't work. You shouldn't present yourself as someone who condones child abuse in a university application essay. That your experiences have given you strong psychological reasons to do so makes you sympathetic, in this context, rather than horrifying, but the horror is there too. The emotional reactions provoked in the reader overwhelm any rational consideration of the traits you are trying to present, and that you want the admissions officers to reflect on.

overall Iagree with the moderator, it sounds like the essay is about your father not you. try talking about your individual srengths.

oh okay, I think I got it guys. Thanks for all the input. I guess because I've lived in my house so long, I've become used to how life is with my dad. I forgot how unnatural my life is. Apparantly my mother and sister have too since they've read over it and never said a word about what yal are telling me. Thanks for all the help. Except EF_Simone. It seems you were spoiled as a child and never had a father, like mine, who could be there to teach you valuable life lessons.

I don't get it. What part of simone's comment conveys a lack of life lessons.

Actually, I was beaten and berated by a parent who, like yours, claimed this was something that was good for me. Since then, I've familiarized myself with the research concerning how harmful such treatment is to children. I'm very sorry if the way that I phrased my reply to you felt hostile. The contrary is true: I feel empathy for you and hostility only toward those who abuse children.


Yes, this is a key element in the dynamics of abusive households (whether households in which children are abused and/or households in which one spouse abuses the other): The violence and excessive control start to seem normal to everybody. Typically, there is some measure of isolation, which keeps children from learning how very differently (and better) children in other families are treated. If they do find out, the perpetrator tells them that other children are spoiled or don't have parents who care about them. Sigh. This is one (of many) reasons why it's so good for young people to go off to college, where they can meet a wide variety of people from a wide variety of households and then, slowly, begin to put their own experiences in perspective.

Well said.

*I can see people commented on your intro. Well
you quote your father with an exclamation mark, but then say that he 'uttered'.
The time it took as I watched my dad disappear into the closet to get the belt felt like the longest thing I had ever waited on in my entire life.

^It makes it sound as if this happened only one time, when in fact, your describing a 'ritual'.


^Well this is disputable. I think the purpose of the essay is to tell readers about an influential person, in which the reader can understand how the writer responds and understands an influence. So, to focus on 'YOU', in my opinion, is not completely necessary as long as the readers can understand how the writer gets influenced and the writer's perception of what influence is.

The writer hasnt fallen for any trick in my opinion. I have understood that the writer has come to appreciate his father's sense of judgement and how teh father conducts himself. The writer does say how he has been influenced in his last parts of his essay.


^This is true. The father did shape his life. Hence the reason, that the father has made an impact on his life, which therefore directly addresses the essay prompt.

I did not quite see it as unrelenting, seeing as how the writer has already admitted that he only gets beaten because he himself knows he did something wrong. If one acknowledges fault, then is it wrong to punish? Also, I think this lashing can be appealing to Admissions because it is quite unusal for an applicant to be so openly honest in an essay. I doubt that the Admissions Commitee will think 'Lashing? This boy got lashed? I dont like this essay'.


The writer does not give any background, so we as readers are left to assume.
I assume that this writer, did something dreadful to the point that even the writer knew he has wronged. (He admits that this only happens when he does something wrong.) The writer gives the impression that this happened on a basis, therefore giving off the impression that he has been a mischevious kid and that this he was in requirement of some discipline. I dont see how knocking some sense into this type of a kid is abuse. I think this is a fine topic to elaborate on, however I just dont think the writer gives enough to tell us how he has been influenced by his father.


^True. The context here is quite important. We are all assuming things here. What exactly is a 'wrong action'?


^Soz Simone, I said that you made an insensitive comment earlier. I cant find it in my post therefore cant delete it.

*I think your essay is fine however you dont give enough context, which leads to readers making assumptions. Readers can be led to believe that your father is some sadist, or that he is in fact hitting you for your own good. You need to clarify what your 'wrong actions' are so that we can understand your father's motives for hitting you. This is a controversial topic, however this may be controversy that catches the interest of the Admissions Committe I guess.

You talk about how your father has impacted your life, even though not that great in detail, but you dont really develop on why he is important to you. You should consider a stronger conclusion.

Alternatively, you can just post a new essay, because with a topic like lashing, reader's empathy, sensitivity, emotions, and subjective beliefs on lashing, will all influence their understanding of the essay and therefore may not work in your favor.

I think that even I may have strayed off a bit here lol.

^^ you def. didnt stray off, you just helped took our replys and broke them down one by one. like you always do :D

NORIS!!! are u gonna do a rewrite soon???

Yea, I'll post what I have so far. I havn't made THAT many changes yet but just tell me how it's coming along. Thanks again to all you editors. Sorry simone, i was having a bad day. Here is some info on why I believe what I believe: The Bible teaches that physical discipline is appropriate, beneficial, and necessary. Do not misunderstand-I am by no means advocating child abuse. A child should never be disciplined physically to the extent that it causes crucial physical damage. According to the Bible, though, the appropriate and restrained physical discipline of children is a good thing and contributes to the well-being and correct upbringing of the child. Many Scriptures do in fact promote physical discipline. "Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death." (meaning eternal damnation) Proverbs 23:13-14. Just an insight on what I believe.

SHould I post my rewrite in a new thread or should i just continue this one?

You MUST continue this one.

Sean and I both advised you to avoid this topic. Sean explained why very clearly: Reading this essay is a terribly uncomfortable experience. As long as you maintain that the awful scene you describe in the first paragraph is justifiable, you cannot possibly word this essay in a way that will not make most readers very, very uncomfortable. Since you are not likely to change your mind any time soon, the only thing you can do is choose another topic.