So here is my personal statement. I am new to this essay forum so this the first time I am doing this. I will be happy to help anyone who helps me when I find the time. I have a meeting with a UC admissions person at my school so I would like to get feed back as soon as possible. Thank you.
Prompt #1 (freshman applicants)
Describe the world you come from - for example, your family, community or school - and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.
I look at my hands as I wait for inspiration to write what is so far the most important reflection on who I am. I notice the dried cerulean paint I was unable to wash off earlier. My nails are unmaintained with chipped nail polish that I do not bother redoing since it only be covered with acrylic paint soon enough. It is no new sight for me. I consider it a part of my image. When I look at my hands, I do not see my Latina skin color or scars from past incidents, but the paint that never completely comes off. It is who I am and I carry it with me, my love for art that is.
At a young age, I left no blank page without sketches of the nearest thing that interested me. I remember organizing a still life of patio plants and vases for me to illustrate with croyola colored pencils. Only now I realize how slightly strange this must have been for a child to do. Young elementary classmates would ask me if I would be an artist when I grew up. At age nine, asking myself serious questions about what I wanted to be, I somehow felt being an artist wasn't in the cards for me. Yet I could not imagine giving up art or seeing my life with out it. I already had a deep foundation and appreciation for art. It had become my world.
I was very lucky to be able to attend a school that encouraged their students to pursue the arts. For the past six years, I have been a part of a very special and small community. It provided me with a balance of strong academics and creative arts. Although I wanted to be successful academically, I wanted to grow and succeed as an artist as well. The two morphed into one in my daily routine. Leaving English class, I entered the studio where I shaped the lines of models that have come in. Absorbing the light that highlighted the body, the information traveled from my eyes to my hand to shade the form evolving into a dancer. After an hour of work, I walk History with charcoal smudges that have ruined yet another shirt.
Lines became less defined, images began to blend, and colors complimented one another. Taking risks, my art and technique matured over the years. The challenges of capturing something new onto canvas only made the finished work more rewarding. I would learn new media from oil to prisma color to printmaking. Papers were filling up portfolios under my bed. I began to perceive what it felt like to be an artist. I was having my art shown in galleries from the school to shows downtown. Sometimes even selling work. My most recent commission work was a seventeen member family portrait for a staff member at school. It was definitely my most challenging project that pushed me to new limits. Currently I am in the process of creating a five-piece mural that will be hung in the school library. I have been honored with the privileged to leave my mark on the school that had given me so much.
Sitting in the classroom watching a video on Dali's life, I was overwhelmed at how interested I became. It wasn't until my last high school years that I realized what I truly loved about art. It was not only creating it, but the learning about people and philosophies behind it. Having the knowledge about revolutionary artists, how they worked, and what drove them to do what they did was something I wish to attain. I would go through the library and pull our books on artists and art movements. Merely knowing about these subjects was a gift. Creating art was like a doorway to something larger I wanted to study.
Always asking myself as a realist what I wanted to be, study or do, no idea would stick for long. Despite the harsh hear those who say pursuing art would only lead to becoming a "starving artist," I could not eliminate this element from my life. I was only recently that I realized the, the one thing that held my interest for so long was Art history. This is what I wish to pursue after high school. I hope to make a career of it what will bring me joy and share my world with others.
Just a quick critique:
Spare yourself the words and work - UCs actually do not want any creative writing, 'setting the mood', etc, whatsoever. Rather, they want the concrete examples and context of who you are, and how your identity was shaped. And they want it quickly and clearly.
Source of info is from an hour-long seminar specifically for the personal statement, conducted by a UCSB admissions officer.
'This is not an essay. This is not an essay. This is not an essay. This is NOT an ESSAY!' She said.
Good luck!
