I gradually felt a big part missing from me.

Describe an obstacle or challenge you have faced in your life. How have you overcome this challenge and grown from this experience? (250 words)

My below average performance in grade 10 midterms convinced me that I could not multi-task. That year I had responsibilities as the School Captain and on top of that I could not let go of my interest in public speaking competitions as well. All of this eventually compiled in my academic results and I vowed to myself that I would solely focus on academics in coming years.

I actually stuck to my promise and did not get involved with outside classroom activities in grade 11. I went to school, paid attention in class, came back home, revised my lessons and repeated the same routine the next day.

It was less hectic and I had huge amount of time to focus on my academics. However, since I was always in the habit of taking responsibilities, I gradually felt a big part missing from me. My school was always lively with events happening now and then. I observed my seniors whole-heartedly involved with everything and staying after-school to devote time for other activities.

This hit me hard and made me realize that there is always a way out if you are passionate about something. I learnt from my seniors that balancing extracurricular and academics were always the trick of time management.

Hence, I registered my name for Student Council in my last year of high school. It was an enriching experience because my learning took place beyond classroom and I learnt to put my time management skills into practice.

The essay goes smoothly but this portion..."This hit me hard and made me realize..." Can you put it in some better words.

@Pri901
yes sure. Thank you for reviewing it.

@fall2017

Hello fall2017! I'm hoping my feedback will be helpful.

From your writing, it is clear you have a story to tell and a background full of information to build up that story. I feel that you didn't address the prompt as directly as you could; the writing seemed to "clip" the prompt.

I'd recommend that you build a web or plot out your essay, start with what the obstacle is, and HOW this acted as a barrier for actions or in your life (sell the detriment of this obstacle). After setting the stage, build up the actions you took to counteract this barrier. This could be realizing the severity, gathering resources, planning and executing your actions. Then you could discuss how this broke the barrier and gave you a direction to move forward.

After you build this essay plot, consider how this relates to the program or faculty you are applying for. This can help smooth the edges of your essay and deliver strong relevance to the reason you are applying. Holt, a frequent community contributor will definitely bring this to your attention :)

Hopefully my feedback helped!

@CDuke93
yes sure. Thanks for the great suggestion. :)

@fall2017

Not a problem! Make sure you REPOST the revised essay in this thread :). We can then, as a community, give you more feedback and guide you to a wicked essay!

@CDuke93
Yes, definitely. That is very nice of you. :)

AvR, what you have here is a summary of the events that happened to you. In essence, you are telling the reviewer about 2 obstacles that you had to overcome in life instead of just focusing on one obstacle. Due to the number of obstacles you have decided to present, you failed to properly develop both problems in a manner that would accurately show a an obstacle to your path, the method by which you overcame it, and the lesson that you learned from it. So you have to decide between the two topics. Which one do you feel has the best chance of showing the challenge you overcame? That should be the story that you should tell. If you feel that you wish to relate both stories because they are interconnected, then one of the two stories needs to be presented as a summary so that the obstacle focus can be on the stronger story. I believe that the summary should be the grades slipping and the focus of the essay should be on how you felt empty but afraid to take on additional activity because of the previous failure. Then show the reviewer how you slowly learned to balance academics with extra curricular activities successfully. Right now, your story has potential but requires more build up. It doesn't have a proper closure to the implied stories at the moment.

@Holt
I agree with what you are saying. I'll redo the essay keeping in mind your suggestions. Thank you very much.