Hello, I need help with this essay. I am trying to show that this event had a huge impact in my life and that I have learned not to take anything for granted because of it. In the past I have had trouble sounding arrogant, is that how I sound here? Is it long enough at 475 words? How can I improve it, I don't know if it is getting good personal qualities about me across.
Thank you so much!
Prompt:
Beyond your impressive academic credentials and extracurricular accomplishhments, what else makes you unique and colorful?
500 words or less.
I met the boy without a name the day I saw poverty for the first time.
At first sight, the boiling day seemed perfect. The soccer game was in full bloom, talented young boys were playing underneath the hot sun while their mothers cheered from the side lines. Upon a second look at the soccer-team sized group of young boys, the true poverty that reigned in my summer town of Iquitos, Peru shone through. The scene stopped me on my way to the small kiosk a few blocks down from my aunt's home. At first, I was impressed by the fact that these kids could run and play on a day doomed with intolerable heat. Wasn't the hot air choking their throats like it was mine? Now, I stood watching because the boys played barefooted on a dirt field polluted with gravel and possibly glass shreds. I watched because the mothers weren't just watching the game on the sidelines, they lived on the sidelines. Their homes made up of sticks and tarp. The boys played shirtless not because they were too hot, but because they had tied their shirts together into a round bundle they were using as a soccer ball. I stared because despite their obvious poverty and need, those boys gave the sun-bleached wide sky a smile I reserved for Christmas and Birthday mornings. My eyes filled with tears at the sudden realization of how blind and impossibly lucky I had always been.
I must have looked very odd standing there, because the little boy playing closest to the sidelines stopped just to stare at me. Despite my attempts to look away and continue on my way down to the candy kiosk, I was locked in place. His black eyes were petrifying me slowly and forcing me to bare witness to his condition. His skin, browned by the sun and resistant, clung to his bones making his shape into that of a child's skeleton. There was a pink scar running from his left armpit to a hidden spot beneath his shorts. His feet had obviously never been contained in shoes and his eyes embodied poverty. I thought I saw his mouth give me an arrogant smirk and he was gone, running down the gravel field at breakneck speed with the ball following his feet as if pulled by a magnet. From an impossible position too close to the sideline he kicked the ball toward the two water bottles that had been stuck into the ground and made a goal. The scream of effort that stumbled from his mouth as he kicked with all his strength engraved itself into my memory.
I will always be grateful for the boy without a name, he taught me to see all that I have and be thankful, so thankful, of the opportunities available to me.
Thank you so much!
Prompt:
Beyond your impressive academic credentials and extracurricular accomplishhments, what else makes you unique and colorful?
500 words or less.
I met the boy without a name the day I saw poverty for the first time.
At first sight, the boiling day seemed perfect. The soccer game was in full bloom, talented young boys were playing underneath the hot sun while their mothers cheered from the side lines. Upon a second look at the soccer-team sized group of young boys, the true poverty that reigned in my summer town of Iquitos, Peru shone through. The scene stopped me on my way to the small kiosk a few blocks down from my aunt's home. At first, I was impressed by the fact that these kids could run and play on a day doomed with intolerable heat. Wasn't the hot air choking their throats like it was mine? Now, I stood watching because the boys played barefooted on a dirt field polluted with gravel and possibly glass shreds. I watched because the mothers weren't just watching the game on the sidelines, they lived on the sidelines. Their homes made up of sticks and tarp. The boys played shirtless not because they were too hot, but because they had tied their shirts together into a round bundle they were using as a soccer ball. I stared because despite their obvious poverty and need, those boys gave the sun-bleached wide sky a smile I reserved for Christmas and Birthday mornings. My eyes filled with tears at the sudden realization of how blind and impossibly lucky I had always been.
I must have looked very odd standing there, because the little boy playing closest to the sidelines stopped just to stare at me. Despite my attempts to look away and continue on my way down to the candy kiosk, I was locked in place. His black eyes were petrifying me slowly and forcing me to bare witness to his condition. His skin, browned by the sun and resistant, clung to his bones making his shape into that of a child's skeleton. There was a pink scar running from his left armpit to a hidden spot beneath his shorts. His feet had obviously never been contained in shoes and his eyes embodied poverty. I thought I saw his mouth give me an arrogant smirk and he was gone, running down the gravel field at breakneck speed with the ball following his feet as if pulled by a magnet. From an impossible position too close to the sideline he kicked the ball toward the two water bottles that had been stuck into the ground and made a goal. The scream of effort that stumbled from his mouth as he kicked with all his strength engraved itself into my memory.
I will always be grateful for the boy without a name, he taught me to see all that I have and be thankful, so thankful, of the opportunities available to me.
