Hi guys! I'm new here and I think my essay really needs help. It's a total of 660 words! I need help on cutting it down. D: Also, I don't know if my response even answers the prompt. It took me forever just to think of something to say. So I'd really appreciate it if you guys can give me some good critiques and hints! I know there are grammatical errors in this essay, and I'd like you guys to catch them, but mainly, i just want to focus on revising the contents first.
Oh yeah, I have a question too: As you guys read my essay, I'll be talking about my volunteer experience for my library's volunteer club, Junior Friends. However, because my essay has gotten waaaay too long, I couldn't mention some of the things that I wanted to, like how I gathered up my courage to run for the Club treasurer and won. Should I delete some things to mention that? If so, what can I delete?
Thanks for helping!
Prompt 1: Describe the world you come from - for example, your family, community or school - and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.
As different worlds clash together, a new world forms. This is how my world came to be. My world started with a prosaic beginning as an introverted little girl. As I reminisce through my childhood, I realize that this little girl was just like a lost piece of puzzle, disconnected from the rest of the pieces that forms the picture of the world that I live in today. My world took its shape by connecting with the world out there, allowing me to see myself in a new perspective.
Up until high school, I changed schools about eight times since Kindergarten. Every time I moved, I never kept in contact with any of the friends that I made because I thought that with my presence being gone from their lives, it wouldn't make much of a difference. With this mindset, I lived through my entire childhood as a passive and timid little girl who was detached from the society. The only place that I felt comfortable being around was at home with my family. They treated me as their family treasure because I was the only child. I felt relieved to know that my existence was of importance to at least three people in this world, my parents and my grandmother. My family was the color of my childhood.
I have always been very grateful for being born into a family that puts me as their first priority in everything. They always let me eat the most nutritious meals, and buy me anything that I request for. Their heart-warming love inspired me to become the perfect child that any parent would have ever wanted in order to repay them for all the arduous times that they had to go through to take care of me. Starting since middle school, I cooked breakfast for my family every weekend, and woke them up at 7 A.M. every morning for work. In school, I worked diligently to get A's. My obedience and good grades pleased my family, and their happiness made me happy. I thought that I would be satisfied living this way for my family until my life started to take a different direction when my parents encouraged me to become involved with my community.
Being the obedient teenager that I am, I decided to join the volunteer club (Junior Friends) at my city library.
Volunteering at the library has boosted up my self-confidence as I started to come into a realization that my existence is actually of importance to people other than just my family. At the library, I assisted the librarians in their computer lab lessons for adults and helped manage special events for the young ones. It allowed me to open up my world and interact with people of various ages, but the best part of all, was their smiles and words of appreciation at the end of the day. They showed me that I am an important part of this community and that I am needed in a place outside of my family. Consequently, I began to see my world forming around people other than just my family. The people that I helped at the library became a part of my world and I became a part of theirs. The library became my second family.
Throughout my 17 years of experiences in this world, I discovered that my existence serves a far greater purpose than just making my parents proud. I learned to value my existence as I realized that I have the potential to make an impact on people's lives through volunteering. Although my world has gotten bigger through my involvement in my community, I now feel the ambition to further broaden my horizons to discover my true potentials and use the best of my abilities to make a difference to the world. My plan to achieve this goal starts in a place where people around the globe come together with dreams of their own, the University of California.
Maybe recount how you felt anxious about starting?
This shows that your a good writer, its very thoughtful. To improve it I think you need to keep the focus more on the volunteering experience. Show how moving around affected you and then link it to how you have turned all your concentration to your family, the part where you talk about the food and the straight A's could be shortened by meaningful details : you were dedicated to family. This means that you may something more tangible and more significant than the details you mentioned and link it to the second paragraph.
Show more what you have done as volunteer: was there a particular experience that made you more self-sonfident? I know that you have a lot going on in this paragraph but you can make it stand out by recounting a particular incident.
Last two sentences are great, but you can still strenghthen the conclusion by making it shorter
Maybe you could go into more details on your volunteering while shortening the third paragraph.
Thanks for the meaningful feedback, Blueshore! I'll be sure to try to put the things that you said into my revision! And thanks for the suggestion, breakingrenee!
Your essay is good. If you want to reduce your words I suggest to remove some words that you used to stretch out your sentence a little longer. There were several I found that can be remove and still mean the same.
Thanks anonymouswriter. However, I had my dad look over it and he said that my essay was something that anybody could have wrote as an elementary student. And someone else said it was a very unoriginal essay. So i'm planning to rewrite this again. But still feel free to give me some more feedbacks so that maybe i can use them as ideas!
I think you can omit the first three sentences of your essay. It'll become an attention grabber that way because the way it is structured right now, seems like you're answering the question so technically. Remember, the admission office is reading a bunch of essays for admissions and their first impression of the story is by its introduction.
If you take my advice. Omit "this little girl" and put "as an introverted little girl, I" instead.
This was very good. A few things needed to be plural.
As a result, every time I changed schools , I saw great improvements in my English.
Having seen the fruit of what many people had contributed to my improvement, my dreams began to form.
Cassie Scheidies
Thanks Easyresearch! :D I'll definitely change the things you said!
