Hi! I am writing about my glasses for my Common App Essay/Personal statement and am looking for any feedback. I do like my essay, but I don't love it. I feel like at some parts it comes across as spoiled/ignorant, and it inflates the small problems I faced with Glasses to something that is almost world ending. I also think that my conclusion could be stronger, but I am also out of words. I also think my 4th paragraph, while I like it, is out of place. Any advice on these issues/general feedback would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.
I placed my glasses on my face for the first time, watching as once blurry outlines and fuzzy shapes came into focus. All the letters on the eye examination board, the medical diagrams around the room, and my mother's face all became crystal clear. The ability to finally use a fifth sense dawned on me, filling me with curiosity, wanting to learn more about the objects I could finally see clearly. How? Why? When? These questions raced through my mind as I made discovery after discovery, piling upon one another inside my head. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, and released a bombardment of questions upon my mom, still just on the drive home.
Since that day over 12 years ago, my glasses and I have become one synonymous figure. Coming from a long line of nearsighted ancestors, it was just a matter of time until I needed glasses, but no one predicted my eyesight to be this bad. At 20/200 vision, almost legally blind, I have endured a long love-hate relationship with the object that gives me the most basic of human senses.
One day, shortly after that doctor visit, I started to watch the Arsenal game. Watching Ozil and Sanchez play, I noticed one thing: no one on the field had glasses. How was I supposed to fulfill my dream of playing on that field, if I had to wear these? Although my glasses had just been prescribed, I had already been the subject of awe in my pre-k classroom, others and myself still adjusting to the changes around my eyes. In times like these, it felt as if my glasses dictated more about me than I did. If I wanted to run, my glasses would fall off; If I wanted to swim, I wouldn't be able to see. All of this added to a feeling that I was different - a feeling that as a child, is the worst. Then one day in second grade, a classmate asked me, "How bad is your eyesight?", and not knowing what to say, I let him try them on. When he put them on his face, he stumbled a little, losing a bit of balance. "I can't see anything, can you really see through these?". For the first time, someone had tried to see the world the way that I see it, and they couldn't. Watching my classmate blink and stumble, without knowing it then, I finally accepted my glasses. They didn't, and still don't, limit my world, but rather help shape my understanding of it.
Since that day, my glasses and I have followed my dad around work and through car shows; my mom throughout the house and the kitchen, wondering how electronics work and why food tastes a certain way. As I have grown, so have my glasses. Each new "four-eyed" experience brings something new to the table that my thoughts eat off, whether it is academic, social, or emotional. In the classroom, loving cooking class, or with my dad, learning to not try and open cars on display - unless you want a bloody hand. Even if I don't internalize each and every experience, I can see the effect on the lenses that have witnessed it with me. Every added layer of specialized lens glass shows me the questions and ideas that I have explored, representing this sense of curiosity that has continued to grow all my life.
Even today, I try to use this curiosity to help become a better leader, and person. My experience has taught me to be inclusive, and judge later, as I don't know if someone else has a pair of glasses in their life - a minor setback that shapes how they see themselves. In the future, I hope to help at least one person stop simply looking through their glasses, and actually see how these devices make them who they are.
Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.
I placed my glasses on my face for the first time, watching as once blurry outlines and fuzzy shapes came into focus. All the letters on the eye examination board, the medical diagrams around the room, and my mother's face all became crystal clear. The ability to finally use a fifth sense dawned on me, filling me with curiosity, wanting to learn more about the objects I could finally see clearly. How? Why? When? These questions raced through my mind as I made discovery after discovery, piling upon one another inside my head. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, and released a bombardment of questions upon my mom, still just on the drive home.
Since that day over 12 years ago, my glasses and I have become one synonymous figure. Coming from a long line of nearsighted ancestors, it was just a matter of time until I needed glasses, but no one predicted my eyesight to be this bad. At 20/200 vision, almost legally blind, I have endured a long love-hate relationship with the object that gives me the most basic of human senses.
One day, shortly after that doctor visit, I started to watch the Arsenal game. Watching Ozil and Sanchez play, I noticed one thing: no one on the field had glasses. How was I supposed to fulfill my dream of playing on that field, if I had to wear these? Although my glasses had just been prescribed, I had already been the subject of awe in my pre-k classroom, others and myself still adjusting to the changes around my eyes. In times like these, it felt as if my glasses dictated more about me than I did. If I wanted to run, my glasses would fall off; If I wanted to swim, I wouldn't be able to see. All of this added to a feeling that I was different - a feeling that as a child, is the worst. Then one day in second grade, a classmate asked me, "How bad is your eyesight?", and not knowing what to say, I let him try them on. When he put them on his face, he stumbled a little, losing a bit of balance. "I can't see anything, can you really see through these?". For the first time, someone had tried to see the world the way that I see it, and they couldn't. Watching my classmate blink and stumble, without knowing it then, I finally accepted my glasses. They didn't, and still don't, limit my world, but rather help shape my understanding of it.
Since that day, my glasses and I have followed my dad around work and through car shows; my mom throughout the house and the kitchen, wondering how electronics work and why food tastes a certain way. As I have grown, so have my glasses. Each new "four-eyed" experience brings something new to the table that my thoughts eat off, whether it is academic, social, or emotional. In the classroom, loving cooking class, or with my dad, learning to not try and open cars on display - unless you want a bloody hand. Even if I don't internalize each and every experience, I can see the effect on the lenses that have witnessed it with me. Every added layer of specialized lens glass shows me the questions and ideas that I have explored, representing this sense of curiosity that has continued to grow all my life.
Even today, I try to use this curiosity to help become a better leader, and person. My experience has taught me to be inclusive, and judge later, as I don't know if someone else has a pair of glasses in their life - a minor setback that shapes how they see themselves. In the future, I hope to help at least one person stop simply looking through their glasses, and actually see how these devices make them who they are.
