Hello, I'm applying University of Minnesota and got this essay prompt
'If there have been any breaks in your education after completing high school or between any years of college or university enrollment, tell us what you did during those breaks'
need some help, English is not my native language><
After I graduated from my high school, I was planning to work in the Malaysia's only legal casino, Casino de Genting. This casino is part of the Resort World Genting, located in the most awe-inspiring and spectacular mountain in the state of Pahang, Gunung Ulu Kali. I went for the interview and I passed it, but I refuse to accept the job.
[...]
You present an interesting story about what you did during your gap season. However, you did not really do much to enrich our idea of you as a person through the story because it remained very light and almost non-committal in the sense of what you learned if at all during this time. Your gap year story should always portray a sense of continued education in an informal setting, a sense of maturity with regards to your intellectual and logical judgements, and a growing acceptance of responsibility on your part. The story that you narrated has the potential to present such aspects of your development but failed to do so. In order to create a more effective essay then, please limit the description of the job that you did not accept. In fact, delete that portion and just stick to the one that you accepted and build upon the growth and development that you experienced during your time there. Be specific mention details that will help support your claims and allow the reader a deeper understanding of how this gap season affected you over all.
Passion. What is passion? Passion is a strong feeling of lust. Everyone has their own passion towards different things. My passion is MAGIC. Why? Why do I choose magic? This is because magic doesn't just entertain the performer himself but also entertain his audiences; it's like killing two birds with one stone. Magic is an art of illusion, making your audiences to believe what you're performing on stage is real. I love to see the curious and "how did he do that?" on the audiences' faces.
Back then when I was around 5, I used to visit my granduncle's house every weekend for family reunion. One day, one of my elder cousin showed me a card trick-Ambitious Card (a classic magic effect which a playing card seems to return to the top of the deck after placed elsewhere in the middle of the deck) and I became curious and I gained the urge to learn magic, so from that day I started to have a little interest towards magic. I started to learn magic for fun and I had learned a bunch of cheap tricks to fool my classmates in elementary school. At the day that I saw the epic act "Walking through the Great Wall of China" from David Copperfield, my jaw dropped! That was the day that I gained my true passion towards magic.
After I graduated from my high school, I was planning to work in the Malaysia's only legal casino, Casino de Genting. I went for the interview and I passed it, but I refuse to accept the job. I would prefer to find a job related to magic as it had been my interest since young.
One day after I passed the interview of the casino, my friend asks if I would like to work in his uncle's shop-The Magic Club. It was a great opportunity for me to pursue my passion, I accept her offer immediately and I called the casino's human department to cancel my post. The day I left home for my job, it was an unforgettable experience for me as I was one step nearer to my dream. My life is much more fun and unique after I start to work in the magic shop.
I was shocked at first after knowing that the workers in the shop were aged 25 and above. This is because magic is mostly play by teens for me. After working there for few months, eventually everything turns out fine, I am so thankful that I could communicate well with my colleagues as I thought I wouldn't. In fact, we always exchange our opinion with each other. While we were exchanging ideas, I had learnt new stuffs from them which really enrich my knowledge about magic.
I also learned a lot of thing from them apart from magic, there was a conflict between the manager and the supplier, and we found out that the quotation that he gave us was far more expensive than the other supplier from china. So we decided to order our goods from China, after we ordered our first batch of goods we found out that the total cost had not much different compared to the quotation that the previous supplier gave us. Although the price of the goods itself is cheaper, but the phone bill, transportation, taxes, and etc., we named it 'the invisible cost' cost us more than it should be if we ordered it from our previous supplier. After this incident, I've learned that we should see things deeper, think from different perspective before we do it.
As the Chinese saying goes, 3 minutes glory on stage, 10 years of hard work off the stage. I remember that the first sleight of hand I learned was 'one handed cut'. It is a basic method of cutting a deck of card with one hand, but it took me about 3 days to master it. The idea of giving up magic had appear in my brain since then, not until the day I performed my first 'ambitious card' to my family member, they were all shocked by the trick, in that moment , the look in their faces made my heart swelled. "You never understood why we did this. The audience knows the truth: the world is simple. It's miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you... then you got to see something really special. You really don't know? It was... it was the look on their faces..." said Robert Angier from 'The Prestige'. This is the most precious thing I have learned in this "3 month chapter".
This is edited one, but i think its too long (784 words), is it okay? is there any part that is redundant
You are going too far back in your story. Just talk about the gap year or years between high school and college. Going all the way back to the age of 5 is not required by the prompt. Since you did not end up working at the casino, you don't need to mention that either. Just go directly to the work that you did at the magic shop. There is no need to mention the work conflict that does not involve you. The point of the essay, if you don't mind me repeating it, is to show the admissions officer that you spent the gap period wisely and used it to experience life and the lessons that it has to teach you without the aid of a classroom setting. You need to concentrate your essay solely on presenting those situations and scenarios in order to address the prompt requirements in the proper manner. It does not have to be a very long biographical essay. Just talk about the gap year events in your life. Present any memorable situations that actually ended up with you learning something that you would not have learned if you did not take the gap year. Make it memorable and insightful. We want to find out how you grew as a person during that time away from school. That is all.
