"Divorced parents, child custody battle" - UCF ESSAY prompt 2

Essay prompt 2 How has your family history, culture or environment influence who you are?

My family history is a little different then other families. When I was 8 years old my mother and father divorced and had a bitter child custody battle. The battle lasted 2 years. During the battle my mother moved to North Carolina and my father stayed here in Florida. After 2 long years of battle my father was given residential custody of my sister and me. That decision was very different than other custody battle; the father is never usually given custody of the children. This brings me to my main topic. My father has been the rock in my life. He has always been there to help me. He is the one who put me through private high school, and watched my grades to make sure I would make it to college.

Living with my father also made me a stronger person physically and mentally. He is the one who introduced me to football. I was 8 years old when I first started playing and it made me a much stronger and more disciplined person. Living with my father has also made me stronger mentally because he didn't always baby me, he taught me to take things and move on with life and if I did something wrong I had to take the punishment. My father has and always will be there for me.

Skip the part where you compare your family to other families, mistakenly asserting that yours is so very different than most others. Families come in very many varieties these days. Keep the part about the court battle if (a) this stressful life event affected you profoundly, and (b) you are going to say how it affected you. Otherwise, stay with your father and what he has been and meant to you.