I appreciate any and all criticisms. Do these essays answer the prompts and read University of California worthy? What do these essay convey about me?
Prompt 1
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.
My father is white. My mother is a short Filipina. When I was little, I asked my father how they'd met. He told me that, one day, while walking along the shore, he heard the cries and distress of a woman in her sinking canoe and so leapt in the water to save her. Overwhelmed with gratitude, the woman wed my father that same day, grass skirt still dripping. I believed it then, and, in a sense, still do. If not by more modern means, my mother really did brave the Pacific to come to this country and my father persistently tried to teach me fairness and resolve - though the comic Calvin was probably lied to less.
Though I have more in common with my father, I more resemble my darker mother. It's made for ever awkward encounters and constant explaining. But, living in a predominately white suburb, I never seriously questioned my own ethnicity until high school. Freshman year, my friend prodded me into joining the Asian Club, a common interest club run by her friends. Through them, I attended numerous high school conferences managed by Asian interest clubs of the local colleges. The audience halls of UCSD or SDSU would be filled with hundreds of Asian students attending educational workshops and speeches. It was at one such event that a girl suddenly asked me how I felt being the only white person in the room.
I was dumbfounded. I asked her why. "Do you speak Filipino?" she asked. I couldn't. "Well, then you're white!" Growing up as a mestizo, I'd always felt somewhat displaced. I assumed that these students, whom I bore resemblance with, could at least relate. Instead I was being verbally excluded. A cousin would make a similar accusation at me because I was not born in the Philippines; I was incapable of understanding its culture. Yet, my parents never more than joked about the issue. If it didn't matter to them, why should it matter to anyone? Instead of shying, I tackled this question head-on. I ran for Asian Club president and won.
Working with the Vietnamese Student Alliance, our club folded hundreds of paper cranes attached to strings for hospitalized children - an act fabled to grant the receiver a wish. We fundraised nearly two thousand dollars for purposes both recreational and philanthropic. We balanced budgets, managed time, and coordinated events. Impossibly, we did this inattentive to race. I found that it is knowing how to cooperate - appearances aside - that best realizes progress. Presently, I encourage all my club members to attend these school conferences and enrich themselves. I plan to apply the skills I've learned managing my club to an engineering field where it will undoubtedly be useful. With such knowledge, I hope that when conflicts arise - or sink, rather - I'll have the skill and resolve to dive in and meet them.
Prompt 2
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?
The darkened room lie perfectly still and I fidgeted trying to do the same. I gazed dimly at the pulsing gray shapes on the monitor and listened anxiously to its rhythmic squishing. It was my heart; my squishing. I was at a free cardiac screening at my school and an observation had suddenly necessitated my own ultrasound. It was lasting disturbingly long. My nurse had left quickly and returned with a very solemn, gray-haired doctor. Calmly, he instructed me to call my parents - the exam had revealed an abnormality.
I felt helpless. I feared what the implications of this may mean, whether I could live the life I wanted to or not. I was a cross country team captain. We ran nearly every day. Worse, our coach would be away most of the summer. Other teammates had taken jobs, went out of town, or were unenthusiastic about the new season since our outlook seemed poor with so many absentees. If I couldn't participate, I would at least help to keep the team from unraveling and so warily continued running.
Ironically, the workouts were just as difficult as their logistics. Our coach had given us only basic instructions, leaving us to decide the rest. Complicating matters worse, we had to manage our underclassmen who were prone to running across traffic, getting lost, or otherwise acting destructive. We engineered the workouts accordingly: plotting on google maps, placing cones, using timers, and even building in double-backs to catch unruly freshmen. When thoughts conflicted, we compromised. We did this every morning, planning usually sixty miles a week. Astonishingly, we lasted the entire summer with little incidences.
We were all relieved when our coach finally returned, I even more so at the news that my earlier examination gave a misdiagnosis. I was able to finish my season without restraint and our team ran memorably well. But my experience lent more than just self-gratitude. Knowing when to argue and when to concede is vital in collaborating in groups. We also learned that plans don't always translate well to reality and being adaptive and finding detours, literal or not, can make all the difference. Looking back, having ran with athletes with asthma and even arrhythmias, I am reminded of my own good fortune. The doctors and nurses I met through this ordeal were ever pleased to answer my questions that my interest in biology fostered. Their kindness certainly opened an avenues towards helping others that I plan to follow fully, borrowing the lessons of my school's track to the biomedical track.
I'll give you feedback to both of your essays but I'll start with Essay 1.
Your essay made me feel particularly overwhelmed. I loved the way you started your essay, with a sentimental anecdote about your parents, and the topic of racial identity ties in well with that, but once you introduced the Asian club and what you do in the Asian club, I was seriously thrown off.
This essay prompt says: 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.
In this particular essay, less is more, and talking about the Asian club, in my opinion, adds nothing to your statement in the current state it is presented in. Focus on one aspect of your life and own it. Become it.
If you eliminate the Asian Club aspect, that will give you room to talk about how your parents and your racial identity has shaped your dreams and aspirations because your essay, right now, does not answer that part of the question.
