Okay so I worked on this all day now and I am satisfied with it. Please be honest with your criticism. Thank you for your help!
Prompt: Stanford students possess intellectual vitality. Reflect on an idea or experience that has been important to your intellectual development.
My innate trust that everything will work out the way I want it to has never failed... so far. Many consider me as one of the luckiest people alive since I always seem to have something going right for me. How many Bolivians do you know who have gotten the chance to live in this beautiful country, sing in an opera, dance in parades, be in the "Who's Who" book, and earn the "Student of Today" award all by the time they were fifteen? Alas, I prefer to think of myself as a hard worker rather than just a lucky person. Luck comes into play in the form of the opportunities that are presented to me. The rest of my 'luck' goes into what I do with these opportunities.
In fact, luck is merely a minuscule factor of my achievements in life. Most of the opportunities I've had can be traced back to how my parents raised me; growing up, I was taught to value the intellectual aspect in life. As a child, I would be the ten year old marveling at the beauty contained in the National Gallery of Art in DC or the twelve year old enjoying "The Magic Flute" opera with my family. The idea that knowledge can change your life has been passed down to me through my parents. The fact that my father went from being so poor that he used to make his own toys out of cardboard as a boy to becoming an architect professor just by using his knowledge is proof of this idea.
Intellectual development is not just about growing wiser, but also about using your wisdom to help humanity. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow." We are all thrown out here in this world with nothing but our mind, our curiosity, just a tiny bit of luck, and an infinite amount of wisdom to explore. I will do nothing less then to seek out this wisdom and attempt to impact humanity in my own way. Maybe someday I will inspire somebody to do the same, just as my father inspired me.
I think you are a good writer and have an interesting essay. But I think you should consider this: The prompt asks you to reflect on an idea or an experience. Is your "idea" luck? Or is your experience how you were raised? I think the essay needs a little more focus.
Another thing to think about is changing the word knowledge to education? Maybe instead of saying that your father got where he is today because of his knowledge you could say that he got an education and that you value education very highly because it has made your family what it is today.
I will do nothing lessthenthan to seek out this wisdom and attempt to impact humanity in my own way.
Hope this helps!
