Hello everyone. I decided that I need a help with my essay. This is my first draft, and because school has not started yet and I haven't shown this essay to my family yet, I decided to share it here for any comments. I'm not very confident with this essay though, so any comments and critics are always welcome :) Thank you very much.
Common App Prompt 5: Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.
Question: Does this answer the prompt? Do I sound like boasting?
"Each of you must pay thirty dollars for a new fridge," my phone vibrates as the message was received. Instantly, my iPad has its browser tuned to Google, displaying the search query "How to fix a fridge".
The white fridge in my kitchen has been the mecca of the residents' nutrition supply for the past three years. We were too often in need for a quick fill up, we forgot to look for what we had at the bottom drawer called the freezer. The time bomb ticked, frost built on its walls, and soon enough, the cold crate was warm. Ask us about what happened to the fridge and we would all point fingers at anyone or the owner herself who does not live in the house. Her wake up call was loud enough to halt my slumber of ignorance.
Not wanting to waste another penny, the need to fix was urgent. But confusion overwhelmed me, as I have never fixed such a complex device before. My tablet screen was on non-stop as the WikiHow and forum pages were rendering with solutions on every possible problem. The next hour, I was myself, in front of the warm shelves grazing front and back, in and out. An immense chunk of hard frost barely sees me, hiding itself on the vent at the back of an even bigger pile of packaged food. Using the instant knowledge I obtained, I immediately unplugged the fridge, unloaded its contents, and left its doors until the next afternoon. I could only sit on the couch and secretly put my evil smile every time someone entered the house and could only stare at the mess, knowing they had no time to even find out that their food had been tarnished because of the heat and must be disposed of.
"Crisis averted," I texted back after every item was stowed back on the fridge.
"Thank you so much! How did you fix that?" she thanked me for the prompt action. I saved my and other residents' thirty dollars!
From that on, I learned how irresponsible I was as a young college student that only cares for grades and stomach, not other people's or even our own welfare. At my home country, a housemaid that I can call anytime will clean the house, or I can just pull down my father's shirt to ask him to fix the leaking ceiling, but what have we here? We are all adolescents, yet we are still like a child waiting for its parents to nurture us all. It's just a matter of who wants to grow up, by having the courage to step up and do the job.
First of all, I must say that you described a very interesting transition in your essay. The transition from carefree adolescence to adulthood, such as what happened in your case was well described. From the point where you realized that you did not want to spend any money if possible to get the fridge fixed and then the initiative that you took to find out if you could fix the problem yourself, these are all traits of transition. You used a very good life changing incident as the focal point of this essay. There are grammatical errors here and there that need fixing but you really did a good job on this essay regardless of those shortcomings. As to whether you sounded like you were boasting, that is to be expected because you are describing a life transition event and in this case, you have every right to be proud of yourself and the method by which you transitioned to adulthood. Even your retrospective at the end of the essay shows the kind of maturity that you developed while dealing with the fridge problem. You more than answered the prompt. You delivered a well thought out essay. Grammar mistakes aside that is :-) This is definitely a very good attempt at writing an essay.
