I'd really appreciate some constructive criticism/suggestions/feedback/ANYTHING about my essay. I feel as if it's a little too ambitious in trying to encompass all of these different topics but I'd like to do so without seeming self-pitying or contrived. Thank you :)
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? (800 word limit)
For anyone who would still be willing to check it, here's a version with some modifications. I still feel like there's something more to be said (or maybe less?) and that I need to work on something but I'm not completely sure what.. It just doesn't satisfy me :| Any suggestions?
We don't speak at the dinner table. Not because we're angry or because we have nothing to say, but merely because that's just the way it is, the way it always has been. My parents weren't the type to encourage talking too much. They used to tell me that if I had something to say, it was probably better off kept to myself. Thus, most of the things I wanted to voice as a child were left unspoken. Questions I had concerning homework were beyond my parents' realm of English, despite nearly twenty years in America. This left any sort of conversation with outsiders to me. Cashiers at McDonald's, customer service representatives, my younger brother's teachers - I was deemed old enough to be the voice of my family by the time I was in elementary school. But how was I expected to communicate with complete strangers when I had been brought up to be silent around my own family, when I couldn't even speak up in class without worrying afterwards, wondering if I had seemed foolish? Up until high school, I was always the kid who got the grades but never raised her hand, the one who had things to say and opinions to voice but never the confidence to put herself out there. And, in the end, the one who would just sit there and watch as others shined in the spotlight. It was a maddening paradox between the outspoken, independent character that my parents wanted me to be and the dutiful, demure daughter that they had tried to raise me as.
Further adding to my parents' chagrin were my hopes of becoming an artist. In their eyes, there was nothing worse than pandering away a chance at the American dream of riches and long-awaited pride, the very thing they had immigrated to find. They wanted me to become the successful and prosperous member of society that they couldn't be. But I was determined to carry my dreams into fruition and began researching art schools in the middle of fifth grade, unaware that, seven years later, I would have to make the hardest decision of my life to take those same, top-ranked, very expensive art schools off my list. After all, ignorance tends to come easy when you're only twelve. You can be deluded into thinking your parents are merely arguing, not fighting; that you're moving from your nice townhouse in suburban Illinois to a grungy-looking little home in New Jersey just for a change of pace. Book-smart as I was, it was only in middle school that I would realize how much things were changing. Our polished dining room table, with its glass top and wood finish, was beginning to crack and I was almost afraid that my family would go with it. The few remnants of my childhood would live in my aspirations of studying art and, as soon as I learned the term, graphic design. My parents' pleas to become a doctor or a lawyer went in one ear and out the other. The endless arguments and debates eventually culminated when I stood my ground against my parents and, to my surprise, they surrendered. Neither of them was particularly pleased but, after eighteen years, they finally understood that it wasn't a phase or a childhood whimsy. It was and still is an ambition I plan on pursuing and they've grown to respect that. After years of keeping silent, I found that I could bring change, that my opinions finally mattered and that maybe they always had. I finally learned how to speak up.
During our last move, our dining table became too scratched and the glass top too cracked to use safely so we put it to use as a place mat for odds and ends. The glass was thrown out and the matching chairs were haphazardly patched with old t-shirts when my mother found the seats ripped from wear. To use as a replacement, she found a small table, less than half the other one's size, in my aunt's basement that we would then use to eat dinner in the kitchen. It barely fits the four of us in our plastic IKEA chairs; I tend to bump elbows with my brother throughout dinner. We're physically closer than ever, in proximity that we've never had. It's no longer just my brother and I, sitting at one end of the long, old table, waiting for our parents to come home from work. Instead, we almost always eat dinner together, as a family. We may not speak to each other for the most part but, for once, it's enough that we're all in one place, at one time. I'd like to think that, if I wanted to speak, I could - but why break the content silence?
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? (800 word limit)
For anyone who would still be willing to check it, here's a version with some modifications. I still feel like there's something more to be said (or maybe less?) and that I need to work on something but I'm not completely sure what.. It just doesn't satisfy me :| Any suggestions?
We don't speak at the dinner table. Not because we're angry or because we have nothing to say, but merely because that's just the way it is, the way it always has been. My parents weren't the type to encourage talking too much. They used to tell me that if I had something to say, it was probably better off kept to myself. Thus, most of the things I wanted to voice as a child were left unspoken. Questions I had concerning homework were beyond my parents' realm of English, despite nearly twenty years in America. This left any sort of conversation with outsiders to me. Cashiers at McDonald's, customer service representatives, my younger brother's teachers - I was deemed old enough to be the voice of my family by the time I was in elementary school. But how was I expected to communicate with complete strangers when I had been brought up to be silent around my own family, when I couldn't even speak up in class without worrying afterwards, wondering if I had seemed foolish? Up until high school, I was always the kid who got the grades but never raised her hand, the one who had things to say and opinions to voice but never the confidence to put herself out there. And, in the end, the one who would just sit there and watch as others shined in the spotlight. It was a maddening paradox between the outspoken, independent character that my parents wanted me to be and the dutiful, demure daughter that they had tried to raise me as.
Further adding to my parents' chagrin were my hopes of becoming an artist. In their eyes, there was nothing worse than pandering away a chance at the American dream of riches and long-awaited pride, the very thing they had immigrated to find. They wanted me to become the successful and prosperous member of society that they couldn't be. But I was determined to carry my dreams into fruition and began researching art schools in the middle of fifth grade, unaware that, seven years later, I would have to make the hardest decision of my life to take those same, top-ranked, very expensive art schools off my list. After all, ignorance tends to come easy when you're only twelve. You can be deluded into thinking your parents are merely arguing, not fighting; that you're moving from your nice townhouse in suburban Illinois to a grungy-looking little home in New Jersey just for a change of pace. Book-smart as I was, it was only in middle school that I would realize how much things were changing. Our polished dining room table, with its glass top and wood finish, was beginning to crack and I was almost afraid that my family would go with it. The few remnants of my childhood would live in my aspirations of studying art and, as soon as I learned the term, graphic design. My parents' pleas to become a doctor or a lawyer went in one ear and out the other. The endless arguments and debates eventually culminated when I stood my ground against my parents and, to my surprise, they surrendered. Neither of them was particularly pleased but, after eighteen years, they finally understood that it wasn't a phase or a childhood whimsy. It was and still is an ambition I plan on pursuing and they've grown to respect that. After years of keeping silent, I found that I could bring change, that my opinions finally mattered and that maybe they always had. I finally learned how to speak up.
During our last move, our dining table became too scratched and the glass top too cracked to use safely so we put it to use as a place mat for odds and ends. The glass was thrown out and the matching chairs were haphazardly patched with old t-shirts when my mother found the seats ripped from wear. To use as a replacement, she found a small table, less than half the other one's size, in my aunt's basement that we would then use to eat dinner in the kitchen. It barely fits the four of us in our plastic IKEA chairs; I tend to bump elbows with my brother throughout dinner. We're physically closer than ever, in proximity that we've never had. It's no longer just my brother and I, sitting at one end of the long, old table, waiting for our parents to come home from work. Instead, we almost always eat dinner together, as a family. We may not speak to each other for the most part but, for once, it's enough that we're all in one place, at one time. I'd like to think that, if I wanted to speak, I could - but why break the content silence?