This is my Common Application Personal Essay, i feel that its a very rough draft and would benefit from some grammatical and idea criticism, thanks!
My Thought
On a typical fall school day, amidst a mess of screaming and kicking children, I did what no other kid has ever done before. Instead of toying with the new Batman action figure, or reading "Horrible Harry in Room 2B" for the sixth time I sat down and thought. Yes you read right, a kid has actually been thinking. The nature of my thought was simple, yet perplexing, and it emerged in the form of a mental voice. It was a nonchalant type, casually asking me "Why?"
I responded "Why what?",
"Why are we playing with toys, why are we doing these things?".
"Well because... it's fun to do these things."
"Why do we play for this so-called fun" it responded.
"Well... I...", I was dumbstruck, no matter how much I racked my brain I could not answer his weird question. I was disturbed and quickly relied on my teacher, Ms Jones for help. She always answered all my questions without falter so I was positive I would get a definitive answer. I called her over and asked her the simple question, "Well sweetie, school is to educate you and your friends" An answer typical and good enough for a kid my age, but yet I was not satisfied. "But why do we learn?",
"To prepare you for life's challenges"
"Why prepare if we are going to die someday?"
At this point she could no longer fight back, instead opting to change the uneasy topic into a more kid friendly one. This only piqued my curiosity to grandiose heights and converted my cogitation into a dominant one.
When I arrived home from school that day, I was armed with the great question. I asked my parents, my friends, and even checked the newspaper in hopes that it would magically answer me, but to no avail. The question grew until it changed my personality, into an inhibited one. After that day I no longer saw the point in playing or reading, I felt no different before and after I did these things, and saw no worldly change in what I did. It was basically a loss of sheer motivation, all due to knowledge (known to be harmful). As I grew older, the idea remained and shaped how I saw the world, filled with pointlessness. It reinforced my comfort zone telling me that there was no point in attending that new soccer club or playing piano. I turned to reading and other anti social activities because I was familiar with them. It wasn't until I was twelve that my question finally found an answer. I was confronted by my gym teacher with the option of joining the basketball team due to my tall height; as usual I was going to decline when I hesitated. This was a good chance to try something out for once after rejecting so many other things. As if called, the voice popped in again arguing that it was a waste of time. This time I ignored it and accepted the proposal. The reason for this change of heart was the mundane routine. It was time for change and it came in the form of sport. I ended up enjoying my decision a great amount, much to my regret that I had not done it earlier. Whenever my special voice would come interrupting my decisions with "Why?" I would confidently answer back, "Why not?".
a mess of screaming and kicking children
Pretty cool... pretty interesting intro.
When you do this kind of thing you need a comma on each side:
I was disturbed and quickly relied on my teacher, Ms Jones
, for----see what I mean?
I don't think the basketball part was squeezed in...but what you are talkng about is usually what people say is "contrived.." something you had to try too hard to include. But I don't think that is what happened here. But it would be good to include one cool, distinct, memorable phrase at both the beginning and end of this... so that at the end the reader wil recognize something from the beginning.
