SHOPPING IN THE GROCERY STORE - tortured by choice dillemmas

Hi, I am an international student from South Korea and English is my second language. Can anyone help me with my grammar? I know it's really bad and some sentences probably don't make any sense. Also, do you guys think that my topic is good enough? does it relate to the question? I just want to tell a story about how I was able to find my inner values and beliefs as I became independent.

Thank you

Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family:

An hour passed since I have been standing in the dairy section, trying to decide whether to get sharp cheddar or mozzarella. This kind of debate in my head tortured me every weekend. For the past three years, I have been living in the corner of the living room of my sister's one bedroom apartment. My parents in South Korea thought it would be better for me if I moved in with my sister who was already studying in the United States. Since she spent most of her time studying in the library, little things like cleaning the house to big things like paying the bills were my duties now.

Grocery shopping wasn't an exception. Every Saturday morning, I would get my purple grocery bag and walk to the grocery store two blocks away. Sure, grocery shopping can be troublesome, but this is not the reason why I hated grocery shopping.

I hated it because I spent all my Saturdays in the grocery store. It took me more than thirty minutes to decide how much fat my milk should have. I needed to go around the store at least 3 times deciding if my bread should have poppy seeds or not. Passing by the yogurt section? Don't even get me started.

The indecisiveness got me worried - not just because I couldn't decide what kind of cheese to get, it's because this affected my daily life, too. Writing a two page persuasive essay was harder than writing an 8-page research paper. Picking a side in a debate class was more aggravating than taking a test. I kept running away from making decisions as I lost confidence in myself.

It took several months as I thought deeply about what was wrong with me. I realized the problem was that I didn't know about myself. In South Korea, I was so acclimatized by other people making choices for me. I'm not saying that taking advices from others are bad - it's just that I depended on them so much, that my inner self were slowly decaying. My identity was lost as I avoided the opportunities that could have shaped who I am.

From that moment of realization, I decided to take a step back in life and started to find my inner self. There were so many questions to answer: Who am I? Why am I here? What are my real goals? And what do I believe in? I tried to answer these questions by carefully paying attention to every decision I made. For example, picking out a laundry detergent made me realize all the hard work that my parents did to raise me and that I took it for granted. From that moment, the respect for my parents and the importance of family became my center value. When I picked my courses for my junior and senior year, I learned that I have a passion for science and math, and want to have a career in that field. When I decided to run for the election of the captain of the WYSE (World Youth Science and Engineering) team in school, I found out that I enjoy competition and love to challenge myself. Thousands of choices I made over three years developed into a forest of beliefs and values that helps me to be independent. Now, it only takes one circling around the grocery store to find what I like. If my sister doesn't like what's in the fridge, then she will just have to deal with it.

Suhee, while I understand the target of your essay, explaining how you came into a realization that you needed to learn to become independent, I am not sure if the way that you discussed it in the essay answers the prompt. You see, the essay is asking for just one specific event in your life that led to your coming of age or adulthood. It is supposed to be that "AHA!" moment that tells you, "I'm an adult now with responsibilities of my own. I have changed as a person.". I did not really get a sense of that in your essay.

The main problem with the essay is that you discussed way too many events that showed your indecisiveness and lack of maturity when you should have only been discussing that one singular moment when you came into adulthood. For some, the event could be something as simple as having a family heirloom passed on to you from a parent. For others, it could be having a debut or bar mitzvah. For some, it is that first time that their parents sent them overseas alone. They were finally in charge of their life and they learned how to deal with the decisions that needed to be made.

I see that coming of age part in your essay. It was when your parents sent you to the States to live with your sister. That is the informal event that marked your transition to adulthood. That is what your essay should be building on. If you can revise your essay to focus more on the way that you came into the responsibilities in your household, then you would have better responded to the prompt. You don't need to discuss all of the lack of maturity that you have in the essay now. You need to show maturity.

So rather than discussing how you find it hard to write a 2 page essay, discuss instead how you and your sister came to divide the duties upon your arrival. Then tell the reviewer about your problem in the grocery store. Don't deviate from the prompt at that point. Instead of falling back on your stories about how you can never seem to make a decision. Explain that you had a hard time at the grocery store at first because you never had to shop before. Detail how you finally came to realize that this was your chance to be independent and make decisions for yourself so you finally learned how to shop for your sister and yourself. Thus, learning to shop at the grocery, along with the move to the United States showcased the informal event that marked your transition to adulthood. Writing the paper in this manner should make it better focused and prompt responsive.

Hi, thank you so much for the advices. I agree with you about how I talked about my indecisiveness too much, rather then my transition to becoming independent. However, I want to focus on how I found my beliefs and values that changed me to be independent. In South Korea, I didn't have many opportunities to make a decision on my own, and I always relied on someone else to make it for me. When I moved here, I had to make every single decisions by myself, which developed who I am as a person. Is there any good idea to talk about them?

One more thing, how would you suggest making a transition of becoming an adult? Mine happened so gradually that I can't really find a good way to explain it. It took a long time to adjust to the lifestyle I have now...

I would really appreciate your help,
thanks

Focus on the move to the United States to live with your sister. Explain the character of your sister and how she may not be as responsible as she should be because of the way you were both raised in Korea. Explain the Korean culture of submissiveness to parents. Then discuss how that culture left you lost and confused in the United States. Explain that you came to realize that you needed to take charge of your life and your sister's life if the two of you were to survive in the new country.

Then you can use the story at the grocery store. But rather than constantly repeating the cycle of indecisiveness, just tell the story once. Make sure that the story ends with you realizing that you were now an adult. Your parents trusted you to come to the U.S. with the ability to care for yourself and, if need be, your sister as well. Create a pivotal point in the grocery store where you realized that your parents were no longer around to make decisions for you. So, wrong or right, you were now in charge of something more than just groceries, you were in charge of your future. The decision making process that goes with grocery shopping was just the start of that adventure for you.

Do you think that you can use that premise for your essay? I think it will only require you to make a few adjustments to your original essay. It will also become more interesting if you discuss your coming of age in terms of never knowing that when your parents sent you off to live with your sister, they already considered you an adult. So basically, you transitioned to adulthood without even knowing it was happening at first :-)

Suhee, let me help you out in the area you need assistance the most.

1st paragraph
- I have been living in thea corner

3rd paragraph
- I hated it because I spentspend ( since it's an ongoing action it takes the present form of the verb ) all

4th paragraph
- ...about what wasis wrong with me.
- I didn'tdon't know about myself.
- I lostm y identity
- was lost as I avoided...

5th paragraph
- ...became mythe center valueof my existence .
- ...career in thatthis field.
- ...election of theas captain of the WYSE
- ...values that helped me to be independent.

Well, your essay is good and I'm rather surprised that you were able to come up with an essay as this one. There is always a room for improvement, obviously, just like your progress in making decision and being decisive, practice played a big role and it will do the same in your writing skills, so keep writing.