Hey everyone!
I was reading some of your feed back on others' essays, and I have to say, I'm impressed. Please, if you could, lend me some advice on the UC Prompt #1. Thanks so much!
- Nick
P.S. There won't be any indentation in the paragraphs because for some reason I can't attach my file, so....thanks!
Describe the world you come from - for example, your family, community or school - and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.
Everything was burning. Flames licked at the windows, the floorboards, the doors. The same frightened expression I wore on my young face was reflected in my mother's, highlighted by the glow of the fire as it swept through the house. Terrified, I closed the book. (End paragraph)
This is the world I come from. Perhaps it's not a single, definable world, but a collection of adventures and possibilities that the books of my youth presented. Each day after school, I would sift through our humble collection of books - our "library," as my dad called it - and would select one to read that evening with my mother. Curled up with a dictionary handy to define any words we did not already know, our story time began. One evening we could explore a hidden rain forest, tucked away in the Chilean mountain ranges. Another time, we would visit Abraham Lincoln and hear his recounting of the Civil War or even dive the depths of the Pacific Ocean, swimming with the fish that thrived on the ocean floor. To me, time and space were tangible, resting between two hardback covers - I only had to reach for them. (End paragraph)
As I aged, author Mike Lupica was replaced by George Orwell and Ray Bradbury. Story time faded into a memory, but the stories themselves were always there, waiting to be rediscovered. When Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, and her overnight stays in the hospital required Dad to take a day off from his job at FedEx, books became my constant. Unable to read to me as she once had, I knew the mantle had been passed. It was up to me to pursue my own education, to fill empty banks of knowledge and satisfy my own curiosity. I read like she and I had read in my youth, exploring the same forests and oceans we conquered years before, only this time with Jack London as the narrator. My parents instilled me with the value that education is the key to my future, and the treasures I found hidden in books only served to support their point. (End paragraph)
In my personal world of books and literature, I could be anything I wanted simply because I could read about it. To this day, the Pacific Ocean captures my attention and urges me to pursue a degree in marine biology. As Mom recovered, I began to delve into the medical field, researching illnesses, cures, and positions I could fill once I completed my education - all in the hopes of saving people who I knew had made as much an impact in their own homes as my mother had in mine. Today, my aspirations are endless. I dream to succeed where no other has before. I want to swim with the deepest of ocean dwellers, to cure even the most virulent diseases - all because I know that with literature, a little luck, and plenty of determination, I can make the impossible, possible. (End)
