I'm posting this essay for a friend who can't get online for a while. She's just looking for some general feedback on her common app essay/ any help with grammar if there are mistakes. Thanks guys!
My first intention with this essay was to write about my mom, a woman who has no doubt influenced me beyond my capability of explaining or understanding fully myself. I was going to focus on how just a week before my junior year was to begin, my life crumbled before my eyes, taking an unexpected turn for the worse when she abandoned me. Then I realized I have spent the last twelve months of my life trying to cope with this abandonment, from a woman who I called a best friend for 16 years, a mentor, and most important of all, my mom, because it is vital to understand she is not just the woman who left me, she is the woman who brought me up, taught me values and lessons I will hold with me for the rest of my life. I allowed the abandonment to effect my grades and my emotions, to tear me down and make me hate myself and feel unwanted and unloved. I was unable for the past year to forget about that night a year ago when six police officers surrounded her, as she furiously screamed to the entire neighborhood "Get her the out of my house!"
These mere seven words slowly seep every detail of that late summer evening back into my world. I once again relive the cold silence of the night, remembering how it had been shattered by the ear-piercing sirens from the police cars, heard a mile away racing to my house; racing to the disaster that the night had turned into, and to the broken shards of my life. The blue flashes sped down the street, towards me, as if they could help, as if they could salvage what was left of this mess. The mess, the chaos and confusion which began February of 2007 when my mother found herself a new man, never a good thing as her constant poor taste and decisions, effected mostly the men who she chose to be with, all of whom harbored an untold volatile rage, a hate, often exploding in mere seconds, spewing venomous words at me, or swinging their fists around hoping to catch one of my brothers. And all came to a close the night of August 27th, 2007 when I moved out of her home, out of what was once my home.
This night has replayed over in my head dozens of times, through the past twelve months, as I am trying to understand, to rationalize the events of why a woman, a mother of five children, would suddenly abandon her children, her own blood. In retrospect, I think she was deserting us all along, a little more each day, all of our lives wondering what she missed or what could have been. I' ve spent countless hours and days grieving over what felt like the loss of my mother, still trying to grasp or take hold at any explanation possible. It is only recently that I've come to see what I have been to clouded to truly understand. I allowed myself to forget all of the good that I DO have in my life: the ones who do love me, and have helped me through this past year, bringing me out of it nearly unscathed. It is with this almost epiphany that I realize, it is what I do with my life matters, not what someone else does in it. It is not who we are that defines us, it is what we do. I am not the girl who was abandoned by her mother. I am the girl who overcame adversity and hardship because she saw something better in her life, for herself. I saw what I am capable of and will ultimately be a better person because of what happened with my mom. She has influenced me in an inexplicable fashion, but from that I take a lifetime of wisdom. College is my chance, to further expand that wisdom, to prove that it is what we do that makes us who we are, not the other way around.
Overall, this is a very strong narrative essay. A couple of things stand out as areas for possible improvement though:
"My first intention . . . I was going to focus on . . ." This seems unnecessary, as it implies that the essay will be on another topic, but in fact the essay does actually focus on the mother and her impact on the author's life.
"The mess, the chaos and confusion which began February of 2007 when my mother found herself a new man, never a good thing as her constant poor taste and decisions, effected mostly the men who she chose to be with, all of whom harbored an untold volatile rage, a hate, often exploding in mere seconds, spewing venomous words at me, or swinging their fists around hoping to catch one of my brothers." Lots of gritty, realistic detail in this collection of words. I say collection of words, because it is not actually a complete sentence. It is not even the sort of sentence fragment one might use for dramatic effect. It's just . . . a collection of words. There are several ways you might rewrite this, depending upon your stylistic preferences. For instance, you might try "This mess, the chaos and confusion, had begun on February of 2007 when my mother found herself a new man, never a good thing given her track-record of poor taste and bad decisions, a track record evidenced mostly by the fact that all of her boyfriends seemed to harbor an untold volatile rage, a hate that often exploded within seconds of their entering the house, as they spewed venomous words at me, or started swinging their fists around hoping to catch one of my brothers." You can probably revise it further to make it even better, but this gives you a grammatically correct sentence to work with.
Beautiful essay, you are a great writer.
Here are some ideas:
I am the girl who overcame adversity and hardship because she saw something better in her life, for herself. I saw what I am capable of and that I will ultimately be a better person because of what happened with my mom. She has influenced me in an inexplicable fashion, and it is worth a lifetime of wisdom. College is my chance, to further expand that wisdom, to prove that it is what we do that makes us who we are, not the other way around.
