Hi everyone, as you may know the option five essay prompts to describe an encounter or life experiences that would enable one to add to the diversity of a college community. I have written my essay but I am not sure if it addresses the prompt and whether I need a title for the essay or not. I would be very grateful if you would look over my essay (below) and give me any advice for it. I would also like some help on syntax and semantics in general.
Thank you
Yes, one may say that seventeen years of a long lifetime that is yet to unwrap itself does not make one an expert in life.Although I acknowledge the validity of this statement, throughout seventeen years of my brief life I have lived a lifetime of experiences. These profound experiences combined with my family background are the springs from which my personality and character have derived, and therefore, the forms of my input to the diversity of a college community.
It was nothing less than war that first showed the negativity of humanity to me. I was only three heading for the fourth year of my tiny life when the former country of Yugoslavia broke apart by an internecine warfare of chaos and horror. My family, like many others, soon had to live with the threat of bombs that boomed in the distant horizon and the massacres that came by with the brutal goal of ethnic cleansing. Escaping the horrors of war through the Albanian Alps with nothing more than rags while the house that had witnessed the growth of many generations of my loved ones burned innocent in the far distance, my parents demonstrated the most astounding human virtue: the love and care for their children even if it meant crossing impassable mountains, dodging bullets, and to the most extreme, risking their own lives.
We returned in the new country of Kosovo, only to find corruption and greed among the rubble of this country that had suffered and survived the darkest part of its history. The vigilance of my parents once more demonstrated their greatness as we applied for the U.S Green Card Lottery and among the millions of applicant won it. Doors opened toward the "the land of opportunities," and although with hesitation and deep grief, we turned our backs to the old buildings, the cobbled streets, the aged mountains, and our loved ones.
As I am writing this essay I remind myself that it has been only three years since our migration to the United States. We have been shattered to pieces during these three years, always clinging on hope with the fullest of our hearts, always clinging on each other for support. My parents have not been able to work the professions they had established as careers in Kosovo, and although this has been very disappointing to me, it has been the grandest source of motivation. Furthermore, my dad has recently suffered episodes of angina pectoris (chest pain) as a result of being laid off from a company only months after starting, and his struggle to obtain any form of employment forced him to indulge in smoking of at least three packs of cigarettes a day in hopes of paradoxically relieving the stress and sorrow.
Life has taught me to be happy with few. It has taught me that the obstacles that lay ahead are nothing more but emotions to overcome and experiences from which one could learn the most. Since my birth I have been a point where cultures have intersected chaotically and harmonically, but my life always maintained integrity as the potent spirit of my family never faded ,as I learned to embrace the positives of both hemispheres, and as hardship and motivation matured me into a self-proclaimed man.
scrooge
Maybe start your essay with the war or a bomb--something explosive and shocking that really exemplifies how you were exposed to something like this so young.
I think the point i got from your essay was that you've seen what people can become when they're ignorant and close-minded. you've seen the effects on a country and in your family. Talk about what you've done to address that. It doesn't have to be big or political. Show that you're positive rather than telling us. Leave us with the impression that you're charged with an energy to keep spirits high and prejudice down because of your experiences. That, I think, would make you a very valuable asset to a college campus.
