My family and my life - Apply Texas Essay
Prompt: What was the environment in which you were raised? Describe your family, home, neighborhood, or community, and explain how it has shaped you as a person.
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School is my safe haven. Every day, I always found new ways to entertain myself, becoming fluent in curiosity from the masses of books and knowledge and filled with excitement by my classmates always finding new ways to amuse me. Unlike other kids, I could never leave school. In fact, I wish I never did. When I came home, my presence was always filled with voices of hostility that would skew my understanding of family.
Because my parents were raised in rural, poor parts of the Philippines, their opportunities for living a luxurious, affluent, and successful life were slim to none compared to my conditions. Thus, they pushed me to reach for perfection and take ahold of every chance I received in America. Perhaps I was pushed too far. I was regularly lectured for any wrongdoings, taking a toll on me as a young child; I was too young to understand what my parents really meant but old enough for their temper to take an impact on me. From forgetting to practice the piano for at least thirty minutes a day to being sick on a school day, I was scolded on the most trivial things.
My dad would especially get angered by these mistakes, taking an emotional toll on me and on my family altogether. The more I forgot to do anything he said, the angrier his attitude was and the more he would ignore the emotions of my family. I vividly remember the day I accidentally forgot to wash the dishes after dinner; my dad, having pent-up anger by the small issue, raised his voice, screamed, spanked, and berated me to the point where my mom and sister would cry for him to stop. After everyone ran out of tears, I sprinted to my bedroom to see my younger brother frozen, sitting straight up in his twin bed with tears running down his emotionless face. Even though I was emotionally distressed at only twelve, I recognized hearing both my parents scream and my mom and sister cry traumatized my brother. So I did what any other sibling should do to their younger brother: comfort him, tell him everything is going to be alright, and put him to bed.
I knew that I could not change my father's attitude; his past, absent of a father figure, made him forget compassion for one another. I realized I could change as a person and fit both of our needs to compromise- My handy ballpoint pen marked my right hand with words every time I was told do anything. Of course my pen did not eliminate all the reprimanding, but it relieved most of it. Soon, the growing presence of placidity allowed me to find true meaning in his demeanor through church.
Every Friday I attended Mass through my Roman Catholic school, I gained independence from criticism and was mesmerized by the priest's sermons as to how they could connect to my life. My ears were always aimed toward the priest's words and eventually, all of his speeches grew on me. My mindset changed while listening to his moral lessons, like when our pastor discussed through the book of Jeremiah how the Lord was always on everyone's side. I grew as a whole, realizing that the lectures and the emotionally-painstaking tempers were not meant to hurt me, but to teach me.
It was around my teenage years when I applied what my parents taught me in life. The lectures from getting bad grades in school or not practicing piano turned into lessons rather than punishments. The talks given for the minor inconveniences were meant to build responsibility from within, not tear me down. And the more I was lectured, the more I grew out of my tiny little bubble filled with comfort.
I knew my parents meant better for me, but their goals of making me the perfect individual far surpassed their ability to love and care. I said to myself that I would never be wretched and would love all despite any hatred aimed toward me. I absorbed lessons of responsibility rather than words of hate from the constant lectures and grew a great passion in education from my aspiration to strive even greater than my parents given the third world conditions they were born into. Slowly but surely, rather than blaming my parents and surroundings for growing into animosity, I saw past each and every mistake and grew as a better, more refined man.Holt Educational Consultant - / 14,801 
4780 Matthew, there is too much focus on the negative side of your father in this essay. Please remember that his actions are not representative of the whole family. If you want to create a balanced essay, that focuses on the family unit rather than just the suffering you had under one person, which is not what this prompt is all about, then you must discuss how your family unit , you in particular, survived the ordeal instead. What was the final outcome? Divorce? A family that was together but split apart? Don't focus so much on the negative. Rather, discuss how this negative turned into a positive for you in the long run. It is important to show that a positive change came out of the dark days or, that you were enlightened by something more than just religion. I am not sure if you are applying to a religious college or not but in the US, it is important to create a balance between religious and social reasoning. Your essay relies too much on the religious aspect, which will work if you are applying to say, a Jesuit university, but if you are not, then you should walk that back and try to find another approach that will skip possibly offending the reviewer, just in case. Your concluding paragraph is strong. It is the middle part that requires your attention.
