My Favorite word is family! This word includes whoever I enjoy spending time with.

What's your favorite word and why?

The first time I learned the word "family" was in kindergarten. My teacher told me that family is a group of people that are related to me. However, I've learned over time that the word "family" is not only restricted to my parents or my siblings, but it includes whoever I enjoy spending time with.

I grew up being a very shy person. I was that one kid in preschool that would always cry in the teacher's lap every morning because I was scared of leaving my mom. Being a timid person, my family was simply just my parents and my brother, so I grew up being very close to them.

As I got older, I started to become less shy and made new friends. However, I was never comfortable around my friends, because I thought there was supposed to be a distinct line between family and friends. As I started getting closer to them, I slowly realized that my friends are not just people I see in school, but they are also like my family. I redefined the word "family" so that it meant a group of people who I can easily talk to and be myself around them. The line between family and friends disappeared.

Family is my favorite word, since it helped me change from a shy person to someone who is excited to meet new people. At college, I hope to teach more people my definition of family and create a family over there.

Hi! Can someone help edit my essay? The max word count is 250 and currently i have 249 words. And please don't be scared to offend me, I am open to take as much criticism as possible!

Hi! After reading your essay, I can tell that you have become into a more cheerful person, and as a result, you have some close friend that makes you feel like family. I don't think this is convincing enough for your statement. You should emphasize the reason for "family" being your favorite word in the first paragraph, or put in the second paragraph as the topic sentence.

Phani, I wish that you had included the instructions for the writing of this essay along with the response that you wrote. I like the way that you developed this essay to include your friends in the definition of family. However, I feel that you did not justify why you included friends in the definition. Remember that friends still carry a different definition in meaning from family.

However, friends fall under the definition of an extended family member at times. Not all friends fall under this definition though since you have ordinary friends and close, personal, sister from another mother type of friends. Its the sister from another mother type that falls under the definition you presented so I believe that you should tweak the meaning and the representation of a friend who is "family" in the essay.

This is a good essay but I think it is a bit exaggerated in meaning. Nothing a little content adjustment won't fix. Reviewers don't like reading exaggerated essays from applicants so your work could very well benefit from the tweak I am suggesting.