I am an international student applying for the admission to University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. Since English is not my first language, I am not really confident about the following essay that I wrote for UNC's Common App supplement. I hope you guys could give me some advice about how to revise it, or how to make my language more succinct. Any suggestions will be welcomed here.
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What problem are you trying to solve, and why is it important to you?
After reading my Grade 2 essay about my dream to develop a vaccine, my aunt, a medical school president, couldn't conceal her amusement. "It's a wonderful idea," she said, "but very soon you would find out how expensive a dream it is." However, despite all sorts of difficulties my aunt had predicted, the vaccine dream remained a legacy of my childhood ambition and inspired my finding of the problem that I want to solve.
While working as a volunteer at our Compeer Mentoring Program, I was surprised by how violently some fellow students react to negative events in life. When asked why they couldn't calm down and give it a second thought, they always stated that they tried, but never managed to do it. For every one of us, there would be certain periods when we feel extremely overwhelmed about our life. The only difference seems to be the way we handle it. While some could aptly avoid the negative impact of their feelings, others have to immerse ourselves in pain for a long time.
What contributed to the difference? I didn't realize the answer until recently, when mom confessed about the way I was raised as a little girl. "You had pneumonia when you were born," she told me. For the first days of my life, I was kept in the emergency room, hovering between life and death. Feeling sorry for my misfortune, my parents swore that they would never let anything like that happen again. In order to avoid infection, they seldom took me out, which probably contribute to my later susceptibility to certain diseases.
In biology class we learned that antibodies are not inheritable. In order to get the antibody, we must first make the sacrifice of getting infected. While my parents were well-intentioned, they wasted a precious opportunity for the development of my immune system. In some ways, I discovered the analogy between this case and my friends' vulnerability when they were facing the ups and downs of their life. If they had never been "infected", how could they know how to deal with the situation? This "discovery" reminded me of the dream I had about developing a vaccine. If we could use vaccines to fight against physical illnesses, why couldn't they be used to make precautions for potential psychological problems?
While the vaccines may cause certain effects, they were much milder than the first-time we encounter a real infection. Throughout my volunteer experience, I saw many cases in which teenagers struggled for years to get over the negative impact of a single event. While I felt happy that they learned a lesson, I remembered a wise man had said that the we didn't have to experience everything to get a good knowledge of the world. Analogously, young people needn't suffer so much to grow into strong-minded, optimistic and self-respecting adults.Studies of psychological development and early childhood education could enable us to understand how to inoculate the "vaccine" which would provide them the "antibody" that they needed when they face an event which might lead to mental distress. I understand that, if this vaccine really works and could help more growing-ups, the influence of it on the society would be at least equally profound as that of those against physical viruses.
Henceforth, the problem that I want to solve is simple: to figure out what we could do at the early stage of a child's development in order to get him prepared for future challenges. Like my aunt had predicted, I would probably never be enrolled in a medical school. But she might as well be wrong, because I still stick to my dream, only on a different path.
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ps. the essay has to be approximately 500 words in length, but mine is probably 600 now. Is there any way I could shorten it?
Please add some comments! Thanks!
I
---- your idea flows beautifully up to " childhood ambition". However, this flow is disturbed by your attempt of using the words, "problem, solution" in order to align what you say with your prompt. :)
I'm sorry, but I didn't really get you here. Did you mean that I didn't stick to the requirement of the essay? It does seem more like an essay about my ambition, though.
Anyway, thanks for your suggestions! :)
After reading my Grade 2 essay about my dream to develop a vaccine, my aunt, a medical school president, couldn't conceal her amusement. "It's a wonderful idea," she said, "but very soon you would find out how expensive a dream it is." However, despite all sorts of difficulties my aunt had predicted, the vaccine dream remained a legacy of my childhood ambition and inspired my finding of the problem that I want to solve.
What I meant was that you have presented your ideas beutifully in the bolded section. That part is very impressive. However, as a reader I find that the rest fail to give the same punch. And I feel it is because you try to bring an alignment to your prompt which asks you about the problem that you need to find solutions. :)
