I would like to know if I answered the prompt, and if what I' trying to say flows.
What matters to you, and why? (100 to 250 words)
When my parents divorced and my father left our lives, my family flirted dangerously with despair. My brothers feared things were changing for the worse. My mother blamed herself for the divorce. My loved ones needed motivation to be optimistic and focus on the positive things. After reflecting on past experiences, I realized that our fondest memories were the dinners we spent together, an event we ceased to partake in the months following my dad's departure.
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When my parents divorced and my father left our lives, my family flirted dangerously with despair. My brothers feared things were changing for the worse. My mother blamed herself for the divorce. My loved ones needed motivation to be optimistic and focus on the positive things. After reflecting on past experiences In retrospect, I realized that our fondest memories were the dinners we spent together, an event events we ceased to partake in the months following my dad's departure. Thus, I decided I would revamp this tradition; I would cook a warm meal every night for my family.
Hope that helps a little. I have to go now, I'll come back later to finish editting.
Okay, there are two options to consider as important in your essay, family meal times and cooking. Which one is more important to you? I suggest you change your lead in to represent the more important of the two in order to create a much better hook for your paper. It is always important to reel in the reader by immediately presenting your response to the prompt and then working your way backwards. That means, give the definite answer to the prompt which in this case is "cooking" and then go back and explain why you had to learn how to cook and how cooking helped you bring and keep your family together. By doing that, you will have created an interesting foundation for your response which is sure to keep the admissions officer interested in what you have to say and what the explanation for your response is. Don't worry about the word count and grammar problems at this point. Let us first work on making the content as interesting as possible for the reader. Then we work on the formatting and other requirements / problems the essay needs.
Oh and the part "my family flirted dangerously with despair.", you know kind of gives an not really a happy feeling for the essay and i think you should change it in some ways or other, sorry if my advice is so ambiguous. :P Best of luck.
Fill in some blanks for me. Why did your mom become too busy to cook after your dad left? Why were these home cooked meals so important to your family? You need to establish the importance of cooking so that we can understand why you would be compelled to take up the cooking cudgels for your mother in an effort to keep the family together. Why were your actions futile? Were your first few meals a disaster? You need to elaborate on this point and try to paint the picture of how your family quite possibly, came to your support after seeing all your effort when it came to cooking and bringing the family together through the food you cooked. How did your family change after your cooking improved? Show us how cooking truly saved your family. The essence of togetherness seems to be lacking in this version. Don't think about the word count if you have one for this essay. Just explain everything as best as you can so that we can work on editing it into the best essay that it can be :-)
How about this version? In other parts of my application I discussed that my mom became too busy with work to cook-- breifly
I am grateful for my ability to cook. It means the world to me because without it, I wouldn't have saved my family. When my parents divorced and my father left, my family flirted dangerously with despair. They feared things were permanently changing for the worse. One tradition we no longer enjoyed was the warm, homemade dinners that formed our fondest family memories. I decided the best way I could help my family was to learn how to cook and revamp this tradtion.
At first, cooking was hardly an easy task. My food was either too salty or too bland. Most discouraging of all was the lack of any change in my family members' demeanor. I was tempted to give up and work with T.V. dinners. But I remembered how powerless I felt when my dad left. There was nothing I could do to keep him in our lives .However minuscule it may be, I wasn't going let go of the chance to make a difference through cooking.
I changed tactics. By experimenting with recipes and combining cuisines, I came to view cooking as less of a duty and more as a means of artistic expression, thus improving the quality of my food. Eventually, my efforts bore fruit. My now scrumptious meals reminded my loved ones that we still had much to be grateful for. I fed my family more than just warm meals; I fed them joy
Thanks for letting me know that you had already discussed your mom's situation in other essay prompts. That makes it unnecessary to repeat the information in this particular essay. Overall, the essay has strengthened with every version that you have presented here. So far, I believe that this current version is the best so far and should be highly beneficial to you should you decide to submit this version along with your other common app essays to the admissions officers. The essay now contains the clarity needed to be able to accurately present the reasons why cooking for your family matters the most to you. You closed the essay with a strong statement that not only summed up the entirety of the essay, but also allowed you to reiterate the importance of doing everything you do with love for your family.