Common App Essay - "Accepting Your Mother's Facebook Friend Request"

The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

overcoming obstacles is crucial for a further success

Hi, I would appreciate any constructive feedback on my common app essay. My biggest fear is that my topic of "divorce" isn't especially unique which is why I tried to shift the focus of the essay onto how I coped with the divorce rather than the divorce itself.

Thursday, 25th December 2013. Christmas day. The room filled with the loud sobs of my mother as she whimpered the words that no child ever wanted to hear: "It's not your fault." There was always a part of me that knew the announcement was inevitable. In the months prior, I hid under the covers and listened to the yelling and screaming that were my lullabies. There were so many times I felt like opening the door and telling my parents to stop fighting, but I never had the courage. Then, on that cold Christmas night, my childhood ended right before my eyes.

With my sisters both studying abroad, I was the only one living at home. I was the only one who knew about their fights, yet I couldn't do anything to stop them.

The effects of their divorce started to impact other facets of my life. When I attended classes, the same humility that prohibited me from confronting my parents during fights also restrained me from asking that "dumb question" in class.

A few weeks later, I noticed a peculiar letter addressed to my mom. It was labeled "MindnLife." Curiously, I googled the organization and found out it was a psychologist center. It occurred to me that I was so self-absorbed that I had failed to recognize how hard it must have been for my mother. When I shut the world out after their announcement, it included her.

Despite the feelings of guilt and wanting to change the past, I knew their divorce was nobody's fault. After months of keeping these pent-up feelings to myself, I wanted to tell my mother that sometimes life just needs to happen and no one is to blame.

Around that time, my school hosted a poetry slam competition, which I decided to sign up for. Hours of brainstorming came to no avail until, like any procrastinating teenager, I went on facebook. To my surprise, I found inspiration on the platform to craft my poem Accepting Your Mother's Facebook Friend Request. I poured myself into the poem. My goal wasn't to win the competition but to unravel my feelings and express them. I handed an invitation to my mother and saved her a front row seat to the event.

The beaming lights adjusted their focus on me as I walked toward center stage. The auditorium was filled with hundreds of people, but in my eyes, only one person mattered. In the blink of an eye, it was all over.

At the end of the night, I remember seeing my mother standing at the exit and holding a bouquet of flowers. I noticed her slightly smudged mascara and red nose. I asked her if she was fine, to which she replied: "I couldn't be better." We didn't say much to each other, and we didn't feel the need. We just smiled at each other as we walked home.

By resolving my problems at home, it helped me focus on other aspects of life. In school, I started to volunteer for geographic excursions, dabble in video editing, and immerse myself in the knowledge of my peers. Furthermore, being on stage in the poetry slam made me realize how much I loved to perform. I auditioned for the school play, which introduced me to a community that helped me grow into the outgoing individual that I am today

There are some things in life, that you simply can't control. However, what you do have authority over, which is even more powerful, is what you make life as you move forward. My family's problems were only as big as I allowed them to be. By finding closure, I learned to humble myself enough to ask and give help. In many ways, this lesson has spurred me towards becoming a more empathetic individual - a person who I will carry with me through life.

Wow, I love your essay! You have a beautiful narrative that took me through your struggles and ultimately, how you overcame that.
The first part immediately caught my attention, and your sentences are easy to follow.
One thing that I had to reread was
"When I attended classes, the same humility that prohibited me from confronting my parents during fights also restrained me from asking that "dumb question" in class."

This basically means that your passiveness in class reflected your unwillingness to raise your voice against your parents fighting, right?

Jordan, I find that the focus of the essay is more on your mother and the effects of the divorce on her and less on how the divorce affected you. The essay will be better helped if you eliminate the long reference to your mother's reaction to the divorce and how she needed help but you shut her out etc. That changes the focus of the prompt from how the divorce served as a setback for you to the effects of the divorce on your mother. The essay should not have you sharing anything about your mother mostly because she is not the focus of the prompt. You have to refocus the content of the essay to use the following elements:

1. The day you were told about the divorce;
2. How you felt about it;
3. How you failed to act out your feelings until the poetry slam;
4. Your mother's reaction;
5. The lessons you learned.

By properly focusing the attention of the essay on you, the essay better addresses the prompt requirement.