"I'll be blunt" - Family history, culture, environment influence UCF essay

Okay, so my prompt seems simple to answer but I need some tips and help with making my essay more professional; we're keeping these until we have to start sending them out next year so we can edit and perfect them for the colleges! So here is my opening paragraph/thesis:

"I'll be blunt; my life has had a lot of hardships and challenges, but who hasn't? We have all been through life-changing events, survived under difficult circumstances, dealt with changes in our surroundings, and have come out changed in one way or another. Not one person can say that they've had it easy their whole lives, unless they truly have, which would personally astound me if I'm being honest. But back to hardships: we've all been through them. Okay, so what kind of challenges have I faced? Not many, but they were the most difficult and most emotionally draining challenges I've had to face in my life so far, and that's saying something for a high school AP student. These hardships strongly influenced who I am as a person; my morals, my thought process, and my characteristics and habits that are very prominent today."

Thank you so much in advance!

I hate to break it to you, but college essays are very different from high school essays. Often there is a word count. College admissions officers also get bored very quickly if an essay doesn't immediately pique their curiosity. So every word matters, and every word has to be interesting. So there is no introductory paragraph. No thesis. Just tell your story.