Hello, this application essay is for the UW, and several Common app, applications.
can you tell me what i could improve? Advise on what i should include more of or what i should exclude? grammatical errors, please anything would help! thank you!
UW
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.
Common app
Option #1. Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Its not an easy thing moving and living in another country, your life as you know
it changes, It can be a hard dilemma and was exactly what I had to face. I was obligated
to go but it was for the better. In late January of 2006 I moved to Addis Ababa Ethiopia
from the United States to live with my grandparents and go to school. I had no say in
whether I wanted to go or not, I just went. My mother said I had to go for better
schooling, but I knew she also sent me so wouldn't grow up to be part of the melting pot
like most other Ethiopian-American kids. Moving to Ethiopia was a hard change for me
and meant I had to start all over again going to a new school and making new friends. I
arrived with my mom and started off pretty well in the first weeks of living away from
my home, but things later changed when my mother left and I had to enter school. When
entering a new school I didn't know anyone, and there was a big cultural and language
gap that separated me from the rest of the students, I dreaded the fact I had to go to
school there. Here I was, a 13 year old kid that didn't know anything or anyone, I missed
my mother and my family back in Seattle and I wanted to leave Ethiopia and never come
back. Classes were very different in Ethiopia than in America, there was much more
seriousness and more dedication to school work. Certain classes were in the Ethiopian
language of Amharic that I still had to take even though I didn't know much, but I
worked hard and adapted to it.
After school there would be days where tons of family members would visit me at
my grandparents home and compliment me on how I looked like my father or how much
I have grown since they had seen me. Most of the people who visited me I didn't
remember meeting. They would visit while bringing gifts and cake and stay until dinner
constantly asking me about school in America, or how my mother was doing it was as if I
were a puppet with no reaction but a smile and a simple answer. It was hard for me to
communicate clearly with them due to the language and cultural barrier between us.
Change was indeed a hardship I had to face, and was something I had trouble
with, but I eventually fought this change until I felt I was at home. I had started off scared
not knowing what to expect and not wanting to live there, but later adapted to the new
environment and never wanted to leave. I came to realization of what I have. Here I
was complaining about living here, but I was surrounded by people who loved me and
new people I have never met, challenges and obstacles that I could face. I realized that
this was a new experience and I should appreciate and cherish, I ended up making new
friends, and meeting tons of new family members, and learning my countries language
fluently, I had felt at home.
Living in Ethiopia started off very hard for me but it was for the better. It set up a
cultural identity for me; I knew about who I was, were I came from, what language I
speak, and all about my family. I also started to enjoy going to my school, I made many
new friends that I could relate too, and the academic courses became easier for me,
because I worked harder and harder until I understood. Towards the end of my 11 month
stay in Ethiopia, I wanted to stay and not go back to America due to the fact that I loved
there. I had complained about not wanting to go to but my mother always knew what was
better for me, I wonder to this day what would have happened If I had stayed in America
and never went to Ethiopia and not ever known about who I really was and where I really
came from. The experience was very pivotal in my life, this experience has shaped who I
am today giving me an identity of who I really am.
can you tell me what i could improve? Advise on what i should include more of or what i should exclude? grammatical errors, please anything would help! thank you!
UW
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.
Common app
Option #1. Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Its not an easy thing moving and living in another country, your life as you know
it changes, It can be a hard dilemma and was exactly what I had to face. I was obligated
to go but it was for the better. In late January of 2006 I moved to Addis Ababa Ethiopia
from the United States to live with my grandparents and go to school. I had no say in
whether I wanted to go or not, I just went. My mother said I had to go for better
schooling, but I knew she also sent me so wouldn't grow up to be part of the melting pot
like most other Ethiopian-American kids. Moving to Ethiopia was a hard change for me
and meant I had to start all over again going to a new school and making new friends. I
arrived with my mom and started off pretty well in the first weeks of living away from
my home, but things later changed when my mother left and I had to enter school. When
entering a new school I didn't know anyone, and there was a big cultural and language
gap that separated me from the rest of the students, I dreaded the fact I had to go to
school there. Here I was, a 13 year old kid that didn't know anything or anyone, I missed
my mother and my family back in Seattle and I wanted to leave Ethiopia and never come
back. Classes were very different in Ethiopia than in America, there was much more
seriousness and more dedication to school work. Certain classes were in the Ethiopian
language of Amharic that I still had to take even though I didn't know much, but I
worked hard and adapted to it.
After school there would be days where tons of family members would visit me at
my grandparents home and compliment me on how I looked like my father or how much
I have grown since they had seen me. Most of the people who visited me I didn't
remember meeting. They would visit while bringing gifts and cake and stay until dinner
constantly asking me about school in America, or how my mother was doing it was as if I
were a puppet with no reaction but a smile and a simple answer. It was hard for me to
communicate clearly with them due to the language and cultural barrier between us.
Change was indeed a hardship I had to face, and was something I had trouble
with, but I eventually fought this change until I felt I was at home. I had started off scared
not knowing what to expect and not wanting to live there, but later adapted to the new
environment and never wanted to leave. I came to realization of what I have. Here I
was complaining about living here, but I was surrounded by people who loved me and
new people I have never met, challenges and obstacles that I could face. I realized that
this was a new experience and I should appreciate and cherish, I ended up making new
friends, and meeting tons of new family members, and learning my countries language
fluently, I had felt at home.
Living in Ethiopia started off very hard for me but it was for the better. It set up a
cultural identity for me; I knew about who I was, were I came from, what language I
speak, and all about my family. I also started to enjoy going to my school, I made many
new friends that I could relate too, and the academic courses became easier for me,
because I worked harder and harder until I understood. Towards the end of my 11 month
stay in Ethiopia, I wanted to stay and not go back to America due to the fact that I loved
there. I had complained about not wanting to go to but my mother always knew what was
better for me, I wonder to this day what would have happened If I had stayed in America
and never went to Ethiopia and not ever known about who I really was and where I really
came from. The experience was very pivotal in my life, this experience has shaped who I
am today giving me an identity of who I really am.
