Promt: Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Does this do its job?
I need to convey a feeling of desperation and utter defeat followed by determination...did you feel it at all? If not what can I do to pack a more powerful punch?
Please, please, please offer any edits for grammer, or style.
Dream school is NYU!
THE MOMENT you lose interest. Please tell me!
Thanks!
At nine, I had fallen under the spell, like many others at my age to the glowing finger, flying bicycle, and Reese's Pieces of E.T the Extra-Terrestrial. The sole most disturbing and heart-wrenching scene, where E.T., gray and unconscious, lay dying in a stream haunted me. At the time, I didn't understand that the culprit of E.T.'s crisis was the thinness of Earth's atmosphere. He needed richer air to breathe.
And, symbolically, so do I. The academic culture combined with the personal trials I faced at the -high school withheld- made the atmosphere to thin for me. The ensuing environment kept me from expanding to my full potential. The school declared best in science by Intel, has its obvious challenges, and demands a student's full submersion in the curriculum and customs head first. However if a student becomes preoccupied with interfering individual concerns success becomes virtually unattainable. <==too pretentious?
My junior year was the root of my problems. I thought I was immune to spreading my self out too thin but I soon found that my varying commitments to co-circulars and clubs outweighed school work. Over all it was my year long Illinois Review Board approved inquiry seeking to correlate print advertisements to a disturbance in body image among females that drained me both mentally and emotionally. I found all my efforts put towards finding proof that would place some blame on advertising companies for using unattainable images of women to get consumers to buy their product, but in the process buying into their portrayal of beauty. Ultimately I wanted to help girls realize that they should seek to themselves to find beauty, but at the time I needed much help in another department.
All the while, my home situation left me unsettled, as -highschool withheld- is a boarding school, living away from is at first invigorating, but the lack luster soon wears off and problems at home were amplified and transparent. Personal dilemmas, from a friend's mental diagnosis to my own, bombarded me every week. At the conclusion of the term, it only made sense to transfer.
This is not to say impossible to face personal dilemma while at the academy, but with a declining social support and fleeting mental confidence that I faced, the task was daunting. Without a doubt, I expect that my undergraduate experience will have its serving bumps and unpleasant surprises but I know that I can seek personal power and strength to overcome them.
Looking back now, if I had I taken advantage of all the opportunities and academic supports available, continuation may have been on the horizon. Nonetheless the atmosphere at -highschool withheld- was suffocating me. The experience has taught me to always proceed every situation with a caution and approach of the same initial intensity.
Now, at my current school I am not only learning but thriving. Where I see faults or sense weakness, I look to family, friends, and teachers to suffice. When I saw that there was a lack of international awareness among the school, my friend and I created a club to promote awareness and discuss foreign relations. Where I noted a deficiency in the school's bag checking and lunch room polices, I helped initiate a dialogue between school officials which would ensure the success and safety of all students.
Nonetheless at times, I have fallen victim to creeping doubts; the most sobering thought for me these days is imagining myself ten years from now, aggravated and disappointed, continuously wondering "What if . . .?"
Where stand now and where I intend to go is compelling enough to fulfill me and assure me of a future devoid of any "What-ifs."
