Hi.
I think this is a really impressive essay, to be able to recount everything that your grandpa did so clearly and present your thoughts so expressively. I can feel your love for your grandpa, cuz I too was brought up by my grandpa until I left him for another country when I was nine. Like you (no kidding), I wrote an essay about the entire life of my grandpa (about 6 pages) earlier this year for my English class. However, the response was no good.
Maybe my English was no good. But after I had read my teacher's comments, although disappointed, I was convinced by her evaluation. The first comment given to me by my English teacher was that my essay was too long. If reading 30+ essay was too hard for an English teacher, how about reading 10 thousand+ essays as an AO? The next thing she said was that the essay was too broad. Too many scattering images that did not serve any purpose were presented.
I remembered it was an early morning at my grandparents house. A few days before the flight to Germany. We had spent the night at their house prior to that day, and we were to go back to the apartment on base, which was only made available as a temporary location for those who were about to go overseas or settling in town.
I did this in my essay too, but it was definitely bad. As a writer you want to be as concise as possible. Words are valuable resources, do not spam it just because you can. Use them to your advantage, make every one of them count.
At the concluding paragraph, you talked about your grandpa taught you to cherish people around you. However, that seemed to be the only learning point. Focus on one idea, like how your grandpa have taught you to cherish the people around you, and use the entire essay to prove it, with your own thoughts. Be creative, dun think about sad things all the time.
His death made me realize that even though nobody lives forever, their legacy will always remain as long as family passes their stories down to their family. He made me realize that if I choose to lament on their passing then I will lose sight of my own life.
How did your grandpa make you realize this? Explore yourself further, ask questions and answer them, you will be able to discover a lot more about yourself. Don't lament your past on this most important essay of your life, think about how can you improve yourself and move yourself to a higher level, be it intellectual or emotional. I truly hope that you can get something valuable even out of this writing experience.
G L~
Also, this paragraph is highly expandable. Cut the part where you talk about your friends, and focus on your thoughts. Departure is something very emotional, get the best out of it.
Unfortunately, at the beginning of 2001 my mom received her next mission to Grafenwöhr, Germany. What made things worse is that it turned out that we only had two months to pack and leave over to our new apartment overseas. Though, I was anxious to actually leave, I was not ready to leave behind most of my friends and family, with whom I had known for basically my entire childhood. Roughly, a week before we went off to Germany we spent the entire time saying our goodbyes to everyone. Of course, the most important goodbye was to my grandfather.