"Expect the Unexpected" Personal Statement

Prompt:Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

In life everyone is handed an eight-color box of crayons and is up to you to find out how many possible color combinations there are. I was forced to switch schools countless times. I went from Commonwealth High school to Colegio Catňlico Notre Dame. It is the toughest challenge I have ever faced, yet the one which I am most grateful for. At Commonwealth not only I played basketball, baseball and football but I was also president of the chess club and treasurer of my class, here I was # 10-222. I had to remind myself of what legendary basketball coach John Wooden once said: "Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out".

Reluctantly I had to accept this change and embrace this challenge. I could not believe I was there after purposely failing the entrance exam. I was accepted anyway due to my grades and the prestige of the school I came from. I walked through the halls that first morning not knowing what to expect or what to do. Those first months I was in denial, I profoundly hated Notre Dame and everything related to it. Everyday would go by and I would simply do my work and stare vaguely through the windows.

Slowly I stopped doing my assignments and consequently my grades began to dip. Next thing I knew I was grounded. If you have no phone, no television, no social life and no friends, there is only one thing you can do, make friends. I joined Pastoral Juvenil, it was a club whose focus was community service. Once this happened I understood what I had to do, and instead of swimming against the current I started taking advantage of it.

Like a chameleon I was finding my own way to adapt to this new environment. My grades were going up again and I was enjoying the opportunity. Instead of blinding myself in sadness I was flourishing as a person and a student. I later joined another club called Huellas, became a class representative and even co-founded a club called Animalia.

Life is about making mistakes and learning from them. After you learn from those mistakes you call them experiences like Oscar Wilde did. You must be able to adapt and transform in order to succeed. Those who are able to evolve without losing the essence of whom they were will enrich themselves as well as their community. Therefore when I am given that 8 color box of crayons be sure that I will try all the 40,320 color combinations and just imagine what I would do with a box of 64.

I need this essay to be as close to perfect as it can be. I know that it is far from that so any help that I can get I will appreciate.

Thanks,
Eduardo

and is up to you - it is up to them

not only I played basketball, - only had I

here I was # 10-222- ?? explain numbers?

I could not believe I was there after purposely failing the entrance exam. I was accepted anyways due to my grades and the prestige of the school I came from - where is there (:

denial, I profoundly - denial; I ..

stare vaguely- stare blankly you mean?

If you have no phone, no television, no social life and no friends, there is only one thing you can do, make friends- Maybe make it more about you like when I had no phone...there was only one thing I could do, make friends.

hope this helped a little! good luck (:

You should keep the perspective the same during that cool first sentence:
In life everyone is handed an eight-color box of crayons, and is up to them to find out how many possible color combinations there are.

And when you go to this next sentence, you should keep it connected to the crayon metaphor:
I was forced to switch schools countless times, and it caused my crayons to ________________ (if you do not connect it to the crayon metaphor right away, it seems "non sequetor" ("does not follow" what you were talking about). I went from Commonwealth High school to Colegio Catňlico Notre Dame, and add something interesting to this sentence to keep the reader's attention.

Your job is to multitask: inform the reader of the necessary info, and intrigue the reader with a little finesse in each sentence.

I like all your ideas! Just do more to "delight" the reader's senses. That is a funny way to explain it, but it's accurate.

:-)