Common App Essay About My Friend That Moved - event that sparked a new understanding of myself

Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

cultivating friendship

Any pointers or tips would be appreciated. Thank you so much

Tears streamed down my face. Blood gushed down my leg. My breath was heavy and irregular. The pain was excruciating. I could not believe that my final words would be "ow." I wished I could say goodbye to my mom. I sat there crying, waiting for an ambulance to take me to my deathbed, or an angel to take me to heaven. Neither came. I said my prayers and prepared for the worst. Suddenly, I heard a voice calling out my name. Was I hallucinating? I turned, and sure enough, my friend Ethan had come looking for me. After he laughed at me for crying because I had tripped at recess and scraped my knee on the woodchips, he made me stop crying, helped me up, and walked me to the school nurse. He was my hero.

That night, he terrorized me with an inflatable hammer until I cried.
This was the nature of our friendship. We helped each other up when we were down, we put each other down when we were up, and we laughed. It was the same way for years. Through elementary school and middle school, we were absolutely inseparable. It got to the point where at any random moment we could simultaneously turn to each other, make eye contact, and burst into laughter for no reason.

That is, until sophomore year, when he told me he would be moving to Texas. "Okay," I said. Sure, I was upset, but revealing my true sentiments would have been terribly embarrassing.

But as the day he would leave drew closer, I realized how much I would miss having him around. In fact, I realized a lot of things. We were not the same in any way. Not even close. He liked golf, I liked basketball. He liked rock, I liked rap. He liked cars, I liked computers.

Though our interests clashed, I realized we did not need to enjoy the same things to enjoy doing things together. I may have expressed displeasure when Ethan got what he wanted, and we would constantly bicker, but in truth, I was content just to spend time with him. No matter what we were doing, I was willing to try it because it was enjoyable.

His last day came, and I cried. I had grown out of my second grade crying phase, but I could not help it. I realized that I should not be ashamed to divulge my emotions. "Shame is for when you do something wrong," I told myself. I decided to be proud. I told him I would miss him, I gave him a hug, and just like that, he was gone.

I realized that a best friend is pretty valuable, and I should cherish one while I can, because valuable things are not any less volatile.

The last thing I realized was that because I had Ethan, I had not bothered cultivating other friendships. We had built a solid clique around our own relationship, and I had an abundance of friends, but I had not invested time into making bonds anywhere near as strong as with Ethan. I began to branch out, doing my best to develop deeper connections with more people and spending time with a variety of friends.

Through the wonders of modern technology and social networking platforms, I can still keep in touch with Ethan, and contact him in the blink of an eye. Of course, because of the thousand miles between us, we are not nearly as close as we once were. He has his new friends, and I have my new friends. But thanks to him, or rather his departure, I have a new perspective on interaction with both close friends and prospective friends.

@vh404930
Hi Kevin! I think your opening paragraph is really interesting and sets off a great tone for rest of the essay; however, I do think that you are only partially answering the question, which is a risky move. The essay is interesting but it would be more impactful f you could elaborate more on you growing as a person phase after he shifted to Texas. Also, I think that in the last sentence you should elaborate as what new perspective have you gained from this experience.

I think the structure is good, and the essay has a focal point, which is great too.

Please have a look at my essay:

Kevin, by the time I finished reading this essay, I wanted to ask if Ethan could come in for an interview. As an admissions officer, I would have liked to get to know more about you, instead of Ethan. More than half this essay is about Ethan and his abilities, qualities, superhuman traits, and other things. There was very little about you that did not relate to him directly. The whole point of the essay is to ask you to look at yourself from the point of view of another person. Look at yourself as a bystander, not as the person himself.

What was the realization here? That you missed Ethan and had cornered yourself into an unhealthy friendship with him? Nope. That is not what you should be portraying. That you branched out and began to develop new friendships that ran just as deep as your friendship with Ethan? Now you're talking. I want to read less about Ethan and more about how you learned how to cultivate friendships after he left that was just as important as your friendship with him.

Revise the essay to show a simple, healthy relationship between two males. Don't border on the obsessive as you do now. Just talk about the friendship in simple "best-friend" terms. Then discuss how you learned that you had somehow limited yourself to simply the friendship the two of you had and you realized that was not very good for you as a social person. So you worked towards building new, lasting, and important friendships aside from the one you had with Ethan. That will be the "period of personal growth" section of the essay and the new friendships, which you will have to explain with regards to its difference from your friendship with Ethan, will be your "new understanding of yourself and others".