I'm an international student and had no one to ask for proof-reading, ANY ADVICE will be greatly appreciated!
Prompt 2: Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution, or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud, and how does it relate to the person you are?
The challenges and obstacles I had faced in high school formed the quality that I am most proud of, the ability to think positive and to understand other points of view. After divorcing my father, my mother decided to move to America to raise her children free from prejudice and full of opportunities for intellectual growth. Although being in an entirely different environment was indeed a challenging task, I was more excited than scared to experience and observe the world I was yet to discover. From a young age, I took a keen interest in different cultures and wanted to find out more insights and ideas behind them. The first two years of high school was rewarding due to my intellectual curiosity and determination for success, and I never doubted that I would live up to my own high expectation, until my mother suffered alcoholism.
My mother valued the importance of education greatly and always taught me that learning is the most worthy cause that never betrays your effort and time. I admired her courage to earn her M.A. degree in her late 30's in America, and her words triggered my eagerness to learn. However, being a single mother in a country where she does not have a single relative was not easy to deal with by herself, and she relied on alcohol too much to ease her pain. For the past few years, she has changed dramatically from the person I had known. She had no hope for anything in her future. Losing my mother's faith and someone to look up to greatly discouraged me, and soon enough, lack of her support became lack of motivation for me.
By the summer that I graduated from high school, my mother's sickness deepened. She and I tried many sorts of rehab programs and counseling, but their effect never lasted longer than a month. I have researched symptoms and cures from book; nevertheless, none of them seemed to have a positive effect. Thinking that medicines are no use, I started to view the world from my mother's perspective to understand her better. When I worked, I tried to understand how tedious it would be to work in the same place for many years; when I did housework, I tried to understand how tiresome it is to come back from work and have dishes to wash; and when I thought about my anxiety for the future, I thought about how scary it would be to have two children's futures solely dependent on her shoulders. It was then I realized how great was the sacrifice that my mother made in order to give me every opportunity to achieve my dream.
Though my mother is still trying to recover from her sickness, she told me that my supporting words relieved her better than any other medicine did. From just trying to look through her eyes, I gained a better answer for her cure than any book has given me. If my inquisitive nature gave me an eagerness to learn new knowledge, experiences with my mother taught me the importance of depth of understanding than just knowing the facts. I believe I learned more from my failure than success, because the loss made me grateful for the things that I took for granted. Now, I have learnt that I should not be arrogant when I am successful, and that I should not let myself down when I am failing.
In the past years, I blamed my mother's lack of support and made it an excuse for my falling grades. But I now realize that the motivation has to come from myself and my own aspiration, not my mother's support. My own aspiration is to discover many unknown facts, understand other people and culture in more depth, and be able to make better choices through my life. The past few years' experience has given me an opportunity to look at things differently and strength to fight during hard times.
Prompt 2: Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution, or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud, and how does it relate to the person you are?
The challenges and obstacles I had faced in high school formed the quality that I am most proud of, the ability to think positive and to understand other points of view. After divorcing my father, my mother decided to move to America to raise her children free from prejudice and full of opportunities for intellectual growth. Although being in an entirely different environment was indeed a challenging task, I was more excited than scared to experience and observe the world I was yet to discover. From a young age, I took a keen interest in different cultures and wanted to find out more insights and ideas behind them. The first two years of high school was rewarding due to my intellectual curiosity and determination for success, and I never doubted that I would live up to my own high expectation, until my mother suffered alcoholism.
My mother valued the importance of education greatly and always taught me that learning is the most worthy cause that never betrays your effort and time. I admired her courage to earn her M.A. degree in her late 30's in America, and her words triggered my eagerness to learn. However, being a single mother in a country where she does not have a single relative was not easy to deal with by herself, and she relied on alcohol too much to ease her pain. For the past few years, she has changed dramatically from the person I had known. She had no hope for anything in her future. Losing my mother's faith and someone to look up to greatly discouraged me, and soon enough, lack of her support became lack of motivation for me.
By the summer that I graduated from high school, my mother's sickness deepened. She and I tried many sorts of rehab programs and counseling, but their effect never lasted longer than a month. I have researched symptoms and cures from book; nevertheless, none of them seemed to have a positive effect. Thinking that medicines are no use, I started to view the world from my mother's perspective to understand her better. When I worked, I tried to understand how tedious it would be to work in the same place for many years; when I did housework, I tried to understand how tiresome it is to come back from work and have dishes to wash; and when I thought about my anxiety for the future, I thought about how scary it would be to have two children's futures solely dependent on her shoulders. It was then I realized how great was the sacrifice that my mother made in order to give me every opportunity to achieve my dream.
Though my mother is still trying to recover from her sickness, she told me that my supporting words relieved her better than any other medicine did. From just trying to look through her eyes, I gained a better answer for her cure than any book has given me. If my inquisitive nature gave me an eagerness to learn new knowledge, experiences with my mother taught me the importance of depth of understanding than just knowing the facts. I believe I learned more from my failure than success, because the loss made me grateful for the things that I took for granted. Now, I have learnt that I should not be arrogant when I am successful, and that I should not let myself down when I am failing.
In the past years, I blamed my mother's lack of support and made it an excuse for my falling grades. But I now realize that the motivation has to come from myself and my own aspiration, not my mother's support. My own aspiration is to discover many unknown facts, understand other people and culture in more depth, and be able to make better choices through my life. The past few years' experience has given me an opportunity to look at things differently and strength to fight during hard times.
