I think I finally found a focus for my second UC application essay. I just wrote this tonight, so it's still in the VERY rough stages. I'd like to shave up to 100 words off, which should be pretty easy since I just wrote this and I'm not too attached to anything but the ideas of the essay yet.
Some notes:
The introduction only briefly touches upon my parents' divorce and my father's mental illness, because that is the focus of my first essay. The sentence in parenthesis in the first paragraph is something that I am considering cutting to save some words - not sure if it's relevant enough or provides enough information to stay, but if I cut it, I'm worried the reader will end up asking "like what?" when they read the sentence beforehand. I also think I overuse the word "ambition," but this is just a first draft so I have plenty of room for revision.
Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?
Following my parents' divorce and subsequent discovery of my father's homelessness, I found myself coping in a strange way. I have always been an ambitious, driven person, but I was confused about the direction I wanted my life to take, and unfocused ambition can be a dangerous thing. After seeing so much of my life fall apart, I found myself striving for achievement just for the sake of it. I accomplished many things that were, on the surface, very impressive, but my achievements steered my life in circles, not forward. I was waiting for opportunity to find me.
Oddly enough, it took another challenging circumstance to set myself back on track. At the beginning of this semester, my husband lost his job, and because he was the on-site manager at out apartment complex, we were required to pack up our life and get out within 72 hours. My brain instantly kicked into overdrive. Boxes were packed, furniture was stored, a place to live was found, and I attended all my classes during that hectic three days, even acing a psychology test.
As we began the job hunt, I wrestled with the idea of dropping out of school to pursue office work. After all, I had been at community college for four years, had changed majors three times, and still felt like I was going nowhere. Instead of choosing an easy road of ignoring my own self-doubt, or dropping out, I forced myself to do some reflection, to figure out why I was still in school after so long. If I wanted to drop out, I would need to prove that attending school was truly just chasing my tail.
I spent almost an entire week both soul-searching and researching. Within a matter of days, I realized that I loved the study of psychology. I also knew that I didn't want to toil away as a cog in the machine, the life that awaited me upon dropping out. I wanted to be someone who was knowledgeable, who changed lives and helped people. I wanted to become a psychologist.
My ambition and drive seemed to refocus themselves almost instantly. I signed up for a student membership with the American Psychological Association, and began speaking in-depth with professors that had practiced psychology about the profession itself. I spent hours painstakingly researching which schools had the top-tier psychology programs, and I learned what it felt like to have a true passion, and a tangible goal.
Now that I have found an outlet for my ambition, I do not plan to waste it. Once I have transferred, I will make full use of all the opportunities available to me, filling my waking hours with classes, psychology clubs, internships, research, and anything else at my disposal. Over the past few months, I have learned to find my own opportunity, and stop waiting for it to find me. Now, my commitment to success means the sky is my limit, and I intend to test my limit's bounds.
whoa, powerful essay Ashli!
your ambition is made very clear throughout the essay, and i think the mentioning of your husband and your family background immediately puts your story into perspective. It's electrifying.
From your essay, i can see that you are a very strong-willed woman, and the hardships you went through really stood out very well.
Lovely piece of work!
Please take a look at my essay as well, and give me some feedbacks
Thank you :)
Okay, here's my first revision. I really wanted to cut a lot of words, so I'm down to 499 words right now (but I wish we had 1200 words so I could make this one 600 and really flesh out what I wanted to convey). I'd love to subtract a few more words, as opposed to adding any more. This one sounds better, but I would love to make the introduction a little more refined.
Hmmmm... the first sentence... is it okay to change it like this?
Following my parents' divorce and my father's subsequent homel essness, I found myself...
You write very well! How about looking into various schools of thought in psychology. This will be so much better if, at the end, you show that you already have begun to form your opinions about the best kinds of therapy -- cognitive, existential, psychoanalytic, behavioral, etc.
