A) Discuss how your family's experience or cultural history enriched you or presented you with opportunities or challenges in pursuing your educational goals.
OR
B) Tell us a story from your life, describing an experience that either demonstrates your character or helped to shape it.
I wrote both the two topics and haven't decided which one to use, please tell me which one is better or help me with grammar, words, or any other errors. All kinds of assistance and suggestion will be appreciated.
A)
I have a family that always has something to do with computers, so that I could always have contact with all kinds of computers and thing about them. My father was an engineer who works for the local bank, my mother teaches computer science at a teacher's professional development school and my uncle was the first local disturber of the Hewlett Packard. Thanks to my family, I could owned my first computer when I was 9, my father gave it to me as a birthday gift, the age that most other children in my city has no idea about what computer is. That was my first contact with a computer, which left me with an impression of a magical and interesting metal box.
My father was busy at work, so he didn't have much time to teach me how to used a computer, my mother took up that responsibility, she made me to know that computer is not just an metal box that can simply react to your command, but actually a powerful machine that helps people with their work and recreational activities, the very first two usages of computer that I have first learned. I was obsessed with computers, it was astonishing for me to know that how much data can be stored in a 3.5 inch floppy and how fast can computer finish a calculation that used to cost people a whole day. Since then, my dream was to become a computer software engineer.
A year later, my father have internet access installed at my house, it was quite expensive at that time, but my father still got one for me. Thanks to him, I could learn more about computers and computer languages. I can always find what I need with the internet. The power of internet firmed my dream of becoming a computer software engineer.
After I went to junior high school, I worked at my uncle's store during summer vacation, which provided me with some valuable experience. My work was mainly fix computers and update software for customers, doing that job, I could learned how was computers worked at common people, and by talking to these customers, I could know that what kind of software the most want but doesn't have, and what kind of software was powerful but easy for them to used. If one day I could achieve my dream, these experience would help me a lot.
B)
I liked computers, and I spent most of my spare time with it, installed the newest operating system on my computer, purchase hardware from overseas, and even use a homemade water cooling system to cool my computer down while playing games...
One day, I read something on the internet about the newly released Linux operating system "Ubuntu", it was light, efficient, highly modifiable and free for anyone to download. I was interested and decided to install it into my computer. I didn't realize that I my CD driver does not works anymore until I download the ISO file, which means I can't burn the file into a CD, and I can't install the system. I used search engine to find out if there is any other way to install an operating system without a CD, and I found one. There was a website provide a solution that you could burn an ISO file into a flash disk and use the flash disk to start up. I went for my flash and try to burn the ISO file into it, it seems like worked, so I restarted my computer and boot from it, but I got nothing but disappointment, though it successfully booted from the flash disk, but when it comes to a screen that says "press Enter to continue", no matter I press "Enter" for how many times, there wasn't any reaction at all.
I went back to internet, searching for solutions, it turns out that using a flash drive sometimes doesn't works with particular flash drive or computers, so that I have to use another way to install it. The another way was to directly boot the ISO file from hard drive, using a third party software. So, I installed the software, and rebooted my computer, it worked! I entered the installation section with excitement and clicked on "install now", but, an error occurred. It turns out that I forgot to remove the target drive that the system will be installed, but when I inputted the command, it wouldn't be removed, and when I try to go back to Windows so that I could search for solutions, the Windows can't be started due to the software I installed. I do know how to get the Windows back to work, but that would destroy what I have already done, so, I sit there and thinking about what could caused the error and how to solve it. After a little while, I found out that I had to hard drives and the way they works are different from most people, so that I remove one of the hard drives and executed the command again, it finally worked, after 30 minutes, the logo of "Ubuntu" showed up in my screen.
That's who I am, I never avoid problems, I would face them, and try to solve them, even when I fails, I wouldn't give up, I would always try to find another way.
