Sculptor Jacques Lipchitz once said, "Cubism is like standing at a certain point on a mountain and looking around. If you go higher, things will look different; if you go lower, again they will look different. It is a point of view." With this in mind, describe a moment when your perspective changed.
***Please not that I have removed the town and school names.
My hometown is one of those close-knit, rural towns where people would comment about how big I've grown or that they liked my family's yearly Thanksgiving card whenever I went to church or the grocery store. One of those towns where neighbors are extensions of family, and they always look out for one another. In my homogenous community of two thousand villagers, there were only a handful of minorities.
As I grew older, it dawned on me that I was different. I was not like the others, I was not white. I had darker hair, eyes, and skin than my peers, courtesy of my parents, who emigrated to the US from the Philippines when they were students. In my middle school of about one hundred students per grade, I was the only "Asian kid". Because of these differences, I thought that I was somehow "special". I wore my ethnicity with pride, espousing "Filipino pride" by celebrating historical and contemporary Filipino national heroes like Jose Rizal and Manny Pacquiao.
It was not until later that I realized I knew nothing about being Filipino.
When I moved to CT, I enrolled in the local high school for my sophomore year. I was impressed by its statistics - there were over two thousand students and many of them are ethnic minorities. It was such a stark contrast to Rouses Point and I excitedly anticipated meeting people of all different races, especially "fellow Asians".
I soon met some "Asian kids" in the first few weeks of school. I was shocked by how different they were to me. Most of them spoke another language at home. I could speak only one language: English. They ate ethnic foods at home. I hardly ever ate Filipino food.
Was I truly one of them? Did race and ethnicity decide my identity? Or was my identity determined by experiences, living situations, and upbringing? From what I experienced, the latter proved to be true. Even though I was ethnically "Asian", I was more similar to those of my hometown.
Xmsamurai
My hometown is one of those close-knit, rural towns where people would comment about how big I've grown or that they liked my family's yearly Thanksgiving card whenever I went to church or the grocery store. One of those towns where neighbors are extensions of family, and they always look out for one another. In my homogeneous community of two thousand villagers, there were only a handful of minorities.
As I grew older, it dawned on me that I was different. I was not like the others, I was not white. I had darker hair, eyes, and skin than my peers, courtesy of my parents, who emigrated to the US from the Philippines when they were students. In my middle school of about one hundred students per grade, I was the only "Asian kid". Because of these differences, I thought that I was somehow "special". I wore my ethnicity with pride, espousing "Filipino pride" by celebrating historical and contemporary Filipino national heroes like Jose Rizal and Manny Pacquiao.
It was not until later that I realized I knew nothing about being Filipino.
When I moved to CT, I enrolled in the local high school for in my sophomore year. I was impressed by its statistics - there were over two thousand students and many of them are ethnic minorities. It was such a stark contrast to Rouses Point and I excitedly anticipated meeting people of all different races, especially "fellow Asians".
I soon met some "Asian kids" in the first few weeks of school. Add "However," here I was shocked by how different they were to from me. Most of them spoke another language at home add "while" here I could speak only one language: English. They ate ethnic foods at home add "but" I hardly ever ate Filipino food.
Was I truly one of them? Did race and ethnicity decide my identity? Or was my identity determined by experiences, living situations, and upbringing? From what I experienced, the latter proved to be true. Even though I was ethnically "Asian", I was more similar to those of my hometown.
I liked how there is a clear point that you are trying to make and it gets to the reader at the end. very well writen, just make sure to fix your sentence structure.
Can I have more input?
My hometown is one of those close-knit, rural towns where people would comment about how big I've grown or that they liked my family's yearly Thanksgiving card whenever I went to church or the grocery store. One of those towns where neighbors are extensions of family, and they always look out for one another. In my homogenous community of two thousand villagers, there were only a handful of minorities.
As I grew older, it dawned on me that I was different. I was not like the others, I was not white. I had darker hair, eyes, and skin than my peers, courtesy of my parents, who emigratedimmigrated to the US from the Philippines when they were students. In my middle school of about one hundred students per grade, I was the only "Asian kid". Because of these differences, I thought that I was somehow "special". I wore my ethnicity with pride, espousing "Filipino pride" by celebrating historical and contemporary Filipino national heroes like Jose Rizal and Manny Pacquiao.
It was not until later that I realized I knew nothing about being Filipino.
When I moved to CT, I enrolled in the local high school for my sophomore year. I was impressed by its statistics - there were over two thousand students and many of them are ethnic minorities. It was such a stark contrast to Rouses Point and I excitedly anticipated meeting people of all different races, especially "fellow Asians".
I soon met some "Asian kids" in the first few weeks of school. I was shocked by how different they were to me. Most of them spoke another language at home. I could speak only one language: English. They ate ethnic foods at home. I hardly ever ate Filipino food.
Was I truly one of them? Did race and ethnicity decide my identity? Or was my identity determined by experiences, living situations, and upbringing? From what I experienced, the latter proved to be true. Even though I was ethnically "Asian", I was more similar to those of my hometown.
I like this essay a lot, it is very descriptive and I liked how you used specific examples rather than general ones. The one thing I'm not too sure of is which perspective changed? Is it that you thought you were a true Filipino and realized that you weren't as Filipino? Or was it your perspective on the fact that you were a minority and then realized that there were more Filipinos like you.. try to make that more clear towards the end :) Otherwise, I like your essay a lot, best of luck!
You do not need to use quotations around a lot of the words..such as "special", "Filipino Pride", "fellow Asian", and "Asian"
