Hi,
The essay prompt is:
Choose an issue of importance to you-the issue could be personal, school related, local, political, or international in scope-and write an essay in which you explain the significance of that issue to yourself, your family, your community, or your generation.
I chose underfunding of pediatric cancer research, as I am a cancer survivor.
The essay is rather short and fact heavy. Do you think it has too many numbers/facts? Did I properly cover the prompt completely? Grammar errors? Vocabulary too simplistic? Do I need to add to the conclusion? Any and all input desired. THANKS!
Here is my essay: I seperated the paragraphs by double spacing.
Pediatrics in the medical word constitutes children ages zero to twenty-one. Childhood cancer is the number one killer of children. This year approximately 3,000 children will die of childhood cancer. Another 35,000-40,000 will be in some kind treatment for childhood cancer. I am one of those tens of thousands of children who are in treatment for childhood cancer. I was diagnosed with an advanced stage rare Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 2008. Even though my survival rate is in my favor, it is not the greatest. I have a seventy percent survival rate after five years. The National Cancer Institute is the Nation's principal agency for cancer research. The government allots cancer research funding to the National Cancer Institute. This year the NCI's federal budget for cancer research was $4.6 billion. Of that $4.6 billion, all twelve major groups of pediatric cancers combined received less than 3%. Under funding is major issue for all cancers -- pediatric and adult alike-- but this issue is especially troublesome for pediatrics.
Cancer funding budgets have been cut fiscally by three percent overall in the past five years due to finically uncertain times in our Nation. Cancer funding is one of the first things to be cut, time after time when it comes to the budget deficit. So many people are burdened with this disease, yet a cure is yet to be found because lack of research due to funding. Remarkable strides have been made in the adult cancer realm with new innovative treatments and understanding of how cancer cells work. But what about pediatrics? Is a child's leukemic cancer cell the exact same as an adults? Do they multiply in the exact same ways? Cancer research needs desperately to be funded in order to figure out these questions and ones similar to them. In lymphoma there is Hodgkin's disease accounting for most of the lymphoma childhood cancers. Then there is Non-Hodgkin's disease which has thirty two sub-types all different in aggressiveness and the ways they spread. That is thirty-three different types of cancer in lymphoma alone. There are multiple types of leukemia and brain tumors as well. There are twelve different types of cancer -- that is not including each ones sub-type. Pediatrics desperately needs just as much funding as adult cancers.
Recently, The Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act passed. It authorizes $30 million annually over five years, providing funding for pediatric cancer clinical trials research, for the creation of a population-based national childhood cancer database, and to further improve public awareness and communication regarding available treatments and research for children with cancer. The act was passed, but the funding is not being given in its entirety. Only one million dollars is being given this year. When is it ever going to end? Finally when a stride of some sort is made and an act is passed, the funding is not given.
Children are our future. If we do not begin by protecting them, what will result of our world?
All this stuff at the beginning should come in paragraph 2 instead:
Pediatrics in the medical word constitutes children ages zero to twenty-one. Childhood cancer is the number one killer of children. This year approximately 3,000 children will die of childhood cancer. Another 35,000-40,000 will be in some kind treatment for childhood cancer.
Move all that to paragraph two, after you tell your own circumstances and name underfunding of cancer research as your issue of concern.
This is very well-written, and it is a great choice of topic. I think that last sentence should be included in the paragraph above it, though, because it is too dramatic all alone at the end.
