Hi there! I'm applying to the University of Washington and am in the process of writing my entrance essays. At the moment, I am in the short answer realm, but as usual, am trying to fit many ideas into a word limit (250-500 words). Ideally, I would like to be near the 500 mark, and I feel like since the UW specified -500 that I shouldn't go over it too much. The essay is not finished yet,...you'll see that I made a few silly notes to myself, but if I could get some help with condensing my ideas I would greatly appreciate it! Plus, if anyone has tips for the conclusion, I won't object :-) (I will include my little outline so that you can see where my essay is *hopefully* going)
Prompt: Describe an experience of cultural difference, positive or negative, you have had or observed. What did you learn from it?
Outline:
Intro: Very excited to see her, high anticipation. Excitement to share our life, our culture, all the things that have formed my identity, learned that it's harder to do that than may seem
Provide examples. Grandma's frugality, loneliness, not seeing people in the streets. Went from big city to a much smaller suburb, experienced culture shock.
Thought that there were right ways and wrong ways, and failed to appreciate or see the same goodness that we found in life
With age, you become so set into your identity, your preferences, that it's hard to see difference in a positive light. There is a difference not only in culture but in age.
Her plane was almost two hours late, and the minutes seemed to drag by longer and longer with time. It was the day of Babushka's arrival to the United States, and the past several months had gone by in a haste to make sure everything would be perfect for her four month stay. In my head swam an array of plans to show her the American culture that I have been so immersed in, and of her sharing any part of the culture my mom and I left behind ten years ago. I imagined us eating Kamikaze Kue rolls in our favorite sushi restaurant, and baking "Chak-Chak", a favorite Russian dessert together. I had planned trips to local coffee shops for the quintessential PNW experience and a comfortable place to sit to listen to her stories. I hoped that our long awaited reunion would be a time of bonding filled with warm memories and ceaseless happiness, but one of the most difficult and trying lessons I came to learn is that drastic cultural differences can thwart such plans and expectations.
What I had failed to realize in my excitement was that ten years apart, ten years of living in two completely different worlds, and ten years of character defining experiences without each other made my grandma a person completely different than my mom and I. The first weeks of her stay were filled with awe and praise for the ins-and-outs of our daily life in the United States, but her attitude began to change with time. While at first the streets were clean, they became "lonely" and "un-inhabited", and we often heard of how she thought they were unsafe, or how people were unfriendly because it was so rare to see someone walk around in our neighborhood. Restaurants became too boisterous, coffee shops were too dimly it, and the amount of 'stuff' in a supermarket was far too overwhelming. While we tried to explain that ~~~ was by no means a bustling metropolis, or to justify the American restaurant experience, every attempt to subside her complaints was met with a commonly themed rebuttal: "In Moldova, grocers are for food, not clothes," "In Chisinau, I could walk at 3 o'clock in the morning without feeling afraid," "In Europe..." and so on and so forth. Likewise, her own idiosyncrasies had begun to take a toll on our life at home. While we had left behind certain aspects of frugality when we moved away, my grandma would save and reuse everything from milk cartons to trash bags. She found it strange to say hello to strangers passing by, or to have conversations with waiters. (I really want to incorporate the fact that she ate like 2 pieces of bread with every meal and in between, but I'm having trouble wording it).
While there were absolutely happy and joyous times, those four turbulent months were also filled with frustration, sadness, and disappointment about the fact that our cultural differences made us clash rather than bring us together. The good and the bad aside, however, at the end of her stay I gained an understanding of what it means to experience, firstly, culture shock, and secondly, such drastic changes at an older age. My grandma was so set in her identity, both personal and cultural, that it made the attempt of appreciating and assimilating into the nooks and crannies of a different culture a painfully difficult endeavor...
Since there's a word limit, try taking out some of the examples? Overall, it's very well written and paint's a nice picture. The conclusion especially, but if you want to add something, maybe mention about how you promise not be the same in your old age, or the next time you travel to a country. Or talk a little more about what you learned.
Check mine too, if you could.<3
