Please give advice!!!!
Topic A: REQUIRED
Write an essay in which you tell us about someone who has made an impact on your life and explain how and why this person is important to you.
I believe that in their youth, everybody has at least one person that forever
alters their life. That person is most often a parent guiding them through the
rough patches of life, grandparent who fought in a war, hurdling over gore with
an inconceivable amount of courage, or some political movement that forever
changed a nation, or even teacher who encouraged you throughout your academic
career. However, I consider the person who has most impacted my life truly
unique, she would be my crossing guard.
Her name was Lisa, not Ms. Lisa, not Ms. Crossing Guard, but Lisa. She knew us
As if we were her friends, not an authority. She patrolled an area that was
used by few and therefore she grew very close with each of us. I could rely on
walking home and turning the corner to see her sitting on the side of the road
underneath the lifted trunk of her red Jimmy in her tight spaghetti strapped
tank tops (not customary upon a woman approaching her fifties), and a pair of
flip flops three inches high, plastered in sequins. Lisa was an individual and
she did things her own way. She is the only person I know with a whale mosaic
on the bottom of her pool and a dog named Cha Cha. She took interest in us,
knew our hobbies, likes and dislikes. She knew our strengths and weaknesses and
knew I couldn't memorize the multiplication tables to save my life. She'd ask
how our day had gone each afternoon and give us a treat to devour each Friday
as a celebration of the weekend to come. Most importantly however, she
protected us against everything we didn't know of.
The area on the way home from school was under developmental construction and
had workers around at all hours of the day. On a sunny cotton cloud spring
afternoon in the third grade I noticed a car full of construction workers
driving down the road peculiarly slow. Then I saw them again and again each
time staring at me so intently that my blood turned to ice and my pulse raced
with my feet as my pace quickened. The fifth time the car came around it
stopped a few feet behind me. I turned to see the men in the car filing out
onto the sidewalk, starting to walk towards me. As soon as I saw them filing
out I shuttled to Lisa so fast, it was as if my feet were gliding over the
white cement. I could not think, I could not see anything besides Lisa's red
Jimmy with the back popped open. She was my sentinel, not only a guard but at
that moment my guardian angel. Lisa drove me the rest of the way home and
stayed with me until my parents arrived. She made sure I was safe and calmed
my frazzled 9 year-old self down. Even when my parents came home I didn't want
Lisa to leave because she could make me feel safer than my parents could.
Over the years that I knew Lisa she taught me many things, such as how to
learn to relax and enjoy a single moment, to know it was okay to be scared
sometimes, and to not be afraid to be different, to be that one fifty year old
woman wearing the skin tight tank top with platform sequins embellished flip
flops compared with the normal argyle cotton sweater and khakis. Even though we
have lost contact since my elementary years Lisa crosses my mind every time I
drive past the corner where her red Jimmy with the popped open trunk used to
stand melting in the sunny afternoon. Here, I remember how she saved me and
helped shape me by making me fearless by letting me know it was ok to be who
you are, whether you were the same as everybody or weren't, and by letting me
know I could be comforted by the ones I loved even after a traumatic incident.
I like the idea of your essay, it's unique and that's really great. You do a good job of describing Lisa but you need more about you as a person. Even though it's really easy to answer this prompt by talking about the other person, you still have to give them a sense of who you are.
I'm not sure what you would want to add exactly because I didn't have the experience you did, but I think if you could just find a way to cut down the description of Lisa and add in description of you it'd be much better.
Your essay is really good and I agree that you need to talk more about yourself and how Lisa changed you as a person. Also I think that this is a great first draft but you need to have a more sophisticated writing style. This essay just screams middle school. You can do without the bubbly imagery and more sophistication. Like when you said "On a sunny cotton cloud spring." For some reason this doesn't sound too good. Also I don't think that you should start with the sentence I believe, try erasing that and start with In their youth. I also think that you should change the word everybody to everyone. So it should sound like this: "In their youth, everyone has had at least one person...." Overall great though :)
