The UF application deadline is coming up and i really need some help critiquing my essay before submitting. I think I'm a little off topic with my prompt, and i may neeed to add some more but this is what i have thus far. Any advice is helpful! thank you!
TOPIC:In the space provided, please write a concise narrative in which you describe a meaningful event, experience or accomplishment in your life and how it will affect your college experience or your contribution to the UF campus community. You may want to reflect on your ideas about student responsibility, academic integrity, campus citizenship or a call to service.
Growing up isn't an easy process, especially with guidance from only one parent. Watching a mother balance playing the role of both parents, exposes a child to things they "aren't supposed to witness" at a young age such as financial struggle and depression. This then leaves a child to question why their mom couldn't always make it to each volleyball game, or why she was so stressed at the birthday parties, trying to keep everything in place. Anger soon develops with those questions and the blame once again goes to the mother. Although, the real question was never asked. Where was my father all this time?
I never had the option of being a "daddy's girl," and that terrorized me during my childhood. I hated being a part of the "dead-beat dad" statistic. Watching kids getting picked up by their fathers after school made my heart feel like it was tied in a knot. As the years passed, I began to accept the fact that my father was never going to come around, and that made me set a new standard for myself. My mom always told me, "Don't let the negatives interfere with the positives." So I took that and ran with it. High school was approaching, and I couldn't let the absence of my father get in the way of what I was capable of doing in the future.
Eighth grade year, I received my first 4.0 GPA, and at that moment, I knew I was progressing from my past. Not having a two-parent support system was actually creating a positive outcome. I was using my anger as a tool to push myself. With that, my success was accelerating. Granted, when I entered high school, things became challenging. The work was hard, but trying to fit in was even harder, and the need of both my parents' advice was not an option. Now only at fifteen, I had to use my independence more frequently. At first it was hard for me to take in the responsibility, but with having the experience of a father's absence throughout my life, I knew I could handle it. Since my freshmen year I have been on the honor roll, and have received many awards such as "Student of the Month," and "Most Improved." I am now a senior, in the top 25% of my class. The capabilities I have demonstrated throughout my life have proven that being without the direction of a father, did not mean the world was over. Rather, it drove me to make something else of myself.
The pain of not growing up with a father still haunts me, but it has made me flourish into the young woman I am today. The experiences and changes I went through without him have made me want to become a positive role model for those who were thrown in the same situation as me. It has pushed me to overcome the statistics of being a dysfunctional child without a father. Instead, I have learned to grow into a strong and independent young woman. And athough my father was never by my side a single day, I thank his significant abandonment for taking me this far.
