Prompt:We are interested in learning more about you and the context in which you have grown up, formed your aspirations and accomplished your academic successes. Please describe the factors and challenges that have most shaped your personal life and aspirations. How have these factors caused you to grow?
Please check for content and grammar! I wrote this really late at night so everything might be messed up without my knowing it Thank you !!
It is the little things that I have always been obsessed about.
This probably stems from the fact that I was so little myself - born from an average, middle class family, I was negligible in the buzzling city of Hanoi. I fitted the role of being little too, and prided myself for it. In 1st grade, as any ordinary Hanoian child, I took careful notice of each minor curve in every letter I wrote, as the teacher would emphasize through taps to my tiny knuckles. I memorized every table, every equation and every formula, because students remembered what they were told to remember. On the streets, I smiled as if I were not sad. To my elders, I bowed as a good child would.
As I grew up, though, I would notice the non-little things in life. I realized that my way to school was filled with dust and dirt - overwhelming and always, it filmed over everything on the streets, and over everyone's lungs. It was hard to ignore the smell of an ever-growing rotten pile of waste, too, when it was constantly waiting to attack my nostrils when I walked by, chasing me as much as I tried to run. Sometimes, I could hear the buzzling city being interrupted by the grumbles of a homeless man, or by a child - usually my age - advertising in hopes of selling some lottery tickets. Yet no one else seemed to notice.
I would later understand why, because despite its particulars for the little things, Hanoi was not particular for its little people. When my loving young cousin, only aged 12, had a nerve infection, he had to wait 2 weeks to be admitted into the hospital, where he shared a bed with another patient, in a crowded room of 10 others. When doctors finally got to him, his legs had been immobile for weeks and it was already too late. But he would just be another little person on crutches for the rest of his life. From then on though, I just stopped being proud about being a person of Hanoi.
Moving to America changed my life. Even though I was still a little person, overwhelmed by tall Western friends and big, flashy culture, I was no longer trapped in a formulaic and superficial Vietnamese society. Me - the negligible Hanoian school girl - was lucky enough to receive the opportunity of a lifetime to have more than one option, to live and to study in America! I was determined not to waste my chances, and not to disappoint my family along with those who I have left behind in Vietnam. More so, I wanted to help the people back home. I wanted the kids that advertised lottery tickets for a living to go to school; I wanted the homeless people that sat in the corner of my street to have a shelter, and for hospitals to have enough beds so that everyone can lie on their own. Even though I felt little at first, only believing my wishes to be silly, America gave me the choice to feel big - to interact with people that knew much more than I did, to learn from classes that I never thought existed, and to develop a confidence that was never touched on before - to build me up as a person who could improve my home city. Truthfully, it was quite stressful and overwhelming in the beginning - my inability to communicate, my social anxiety, and my homesickness were all added up at once. I could even remember periods when I would lock myself in the bathroom, sobbing alone, and when I could not wake up in the morning - it was the thought of my little cousin and the little people of Hanoi that got me out of the house. My new friends and teachers too, were great supporters - their openness inspired me to be open myself, and to discover my individual interest, which turned out to be engineering and math in the little things: molecular biology and nuclear engineering. Eventually, I hope to bring those little things back to Vietnam and make some big changes to my society.
It is the little things that I have always been obsessed about.
There are little things that I have always been obsessed about.
born from an average, middle class family
born in
prided myself for it
prided myself on it
Me - the negligible Hanoian school girl
I - the negligible Hanoian school girl
I guess you can expand more on your last paragraph: how America has changed you, how your family and heritage make you stronger, how you came to love engineering, etc. You wrote a lot about your childhood and people in Hanoi but they seem to have no connection with who you are right now and what you are trying to pursue in life.
Please return the favor by critiquing my essay! :)
Linda, I really like the way you presented the part of the essay about your cousin and his experience with the Hanoi hospital. In fact, I believe that you should make that the introduction paragraph of the essay. It is a very effective hook that will keep te reader interested in fi in out the rest ofnyour story. The first part you have now abiutbyour birth and the traditional upbringing you had is just too boring and commonn for essays like these.
Having said that, I also believe that you should make more mention of how you had to overcome your own obstacles in the States. It is just underdeveloped because you left the explanation at the thought of your cousin was the only reason you survived. Surely there were other strong factors that helped over that hurdle. Those are worth mentioning here because it shows the development of your dreams and aspirations, along with your academic growth which did not reforge much attention in your essay but is an important part of the prompt. Accomplish that and then the grammar issues of the paper can then be corrected :-)
