Describe a meaningful event, experience or accomplishment in your life and how it will affect your college experience or your contribution to the UF campus community. You may want to reflect on your family, your school or community activities, or your involvement in areas outside of school.
A visit back home
Looking around, I see eyes stabbing me with the screaming pain of famine and suffering while I sit horrified, yet comfortable in the air-conditioned Toyota Rav-4. My father s futile attempt to reassure me by telling me not to worry about them went in the left ear and out the right. I could read it off their faces, they wanted to tell me that only reason I wasn t standing right next to them was luck, and that I was the same decaying organic matter as they were.
Lying on my bed thinking about what had just happened, not only was I in shock, but severely dumbstruck. It had been a while since the last time I went to Haiti which therefore made it a little harder for me to adjust. I was in shock; not only because of the poverty, but from the message I got from them. My ignorance stopped me from realizing how lucky I really was. I had always been passive about the nagging comments about how much I took everything for granted because I thought that s what every parent told their child.
I then realized what great regret I held towards myself. My stubbornness from not heeding my parents' lectures about how lucky I was had slowly morphed into ignorance over the years. I saw things differently then how I did when I was eight. I returned to Miami with a completely new state of mind. Everything I did, I stopped to appreciate it, from having food on the table to having a place to sleep at night. I felt the need to do more, to make myself getting used to getting used, because I would otherwise be useless to everyone and everything around me. I began helping more around the house, went to look for a job, and focused more on my school work. I also helped set up a food drive for the hurricane victims in Haiti throughout my whole school from my French honor society club.
My appreciation towards that trip to Haiti will never cease. It helped me open my eyes to the fact that outside of my perfect little world, there is poverty, famine, war, and other atrocities taking place globally. I cannot say that the trip instantly made me a better person, but rather that it was the spark to ignite the flame of determination within me to excel and take advantage of the opportunities that await me.
You've got a good illustration here and you do a good job of describing your experience and how it has changed you. The prompt asks you to link that experience to how you will contribute to the UF campus, so that's what you need to focus on how. You can add on a new paragraph at the end of the campus or work it into one of the earlier sections, whichever feels better to you.
