Lifelong bonds - What is important to you? And why?

Hi everyone!! Any feedback or constructive criticism for my first draft is greatly appreciated, I apologize if I had made any weird word choices or grammar mistakes my essay writing skills aren't that great haha :) thanks so much in advance for helping if you do!! It's my first time posting a question here, hopefully I started it in the right thread

the friendship

The thing I value the most is the lifelong bonds I have with my friends from elementary school. When I was younger, I had trouble making friends because at the time, my English wasn't good and I stood out to be awkward. This all changed when I transferred to another school, when I started meeting new people. The friends I had from elementary school really helped me and had a huge impact in my life, they have been with me through my ups and downs. They helped improve my English speaking skills when my English wasn't that great and changed me for the better with each of their unique personalities. My friends were very outgoing and friendly, they put me in situations where I had to talk to someone new because we would try to introduce people into our friend group if they were new. As I got older, we ended up going to different schools. One of my closest friends moved away to Calgary, and our lives started to go down on a different path as our interests differed however, we always made our friendship a priority as we still kept in touch with each other.

From helping each other out with school homework to having late nights where we would go shopping, the friendship I had with my elementary school friends is something I cherish. They helped shape me into who I am today, and more importantly they were the people I felt most comfortable being myself with.

There is a disconnection between the first few sentences in your presentation and the rest of your essay. You should reformat the first half of your presentation. You have to show the reviewer early on that there was a strong friendship / bond that was developed between you and your grammar school friends. Explain how it developed and why this development was important to your growth as a person. More importantly, explain how their friendship helped you stop being the awkward person you knew you were at the start. You should consider making the essay a bit deeper in terms of context. It feels too shallow at the moment. Almost as if you are just stating things as a matter of fact rather than narrating an important time in your life that helped you discover the importance of friendship and the support of friends.