"Keep the conversation flowing" - Dartmouth Extracurricular

Hi everyone,

This is my (much) revised version of my earlier essay. PLEASE CRITIQUE, and Thank You so much in advance!
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Things changed on that Sunday morning when I saw my roommate still lying in bed three hours after she woke up; tucking herself tightly in the blankets, she was sobbing. The sun was bright, but my heart sunk in darkness. Her posture reminded me I was once like her, depressed. The familiar agony of depression thus pushed me live a bigger life than fun weekend regattas. Forcing my roommate up so she could actually talk with me, I became the listener whom I once so wished to have. But my roommate wasn't the only one. In our school where 87 of 95 international students were Chinese, conversations didn't come as easily as indifference. As summer rolled around, I wrote a seven-page letter about my experience and sent it to my teachers. Speaking up empowered me. So although no one replied, I knew I could do more. Coming back to school, I initiated a writing lab and paired international students up with American students. Now we had 60 of us in the room, and each of us all needed to have our stories told and voice heard. We have to keep the conversation flowing and our understandings deepening.

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"Things changed on that Sunday morning" Things is a really generic word. I suggest something like: Everything changed... or Something inside me changed...

"The familiar agony of depression thus pushed me TO live a bigger life than fun weekend regattas"
"I became the listener whom I once so wished to have." I would remove so from this sentence
"I became the listener whom I once so wished to have. But my roommate wasn't the only one." These sentences do not really go together, they need a transition in between them.

But other than that it is very well written and to the point! Good job. Hope this helped!

If you don't mind, could you check out my common app essay? Any feedback is much appreciated! Thanks :)