I am currently writing an essay for a college fly-in at Williams College and I am a bit behind on the due date (4 days!) Any help would be appreciated, especially geared towards accuracy with topic/prompt.
Prompt: Describe your neighborhood and how it impacts who you are. Please limit your response to 300 words.
Being the only place an immigrant at the time could call home, my childhood began in a small apartment complex located a couple miles east of downtown Phoenix. The Castellana apartment complex was a mixing pot full of diversity, bringing in people from all different upbringings and cultures to create a community of families just trying to reach the American Dream. Families would group up with each other and engage in weekly activities such as attend the swap meet together, have dinner with each other, and invite each other over to watch big sporting events on one of the only TVs in the complex. Even though we were all from different backgrounds, our families worked together to make living in a new environment a lot easier. At a young age, I learned the value of community and family.
When I turned four, I moved to a suburban area of Phoenix that was still in development. The area was called "ghetto" by many Phoenicians but my family had to make a decision to somehow fit nine of us in a household. I began pre-k at an elementary school across the canal where families from different walks of life enrolled their children to receive at least some kind of education. Many students didn't attend school because they had to work with their parents to provide more income to help the family survive in a new country. These parents knew the value of education and they always reminded their children, but the truth was, the parents couldn't afford to have their children in schools because they had to help provide for their family. This is where I learned the importance of education and the privilege I had in order to find a way to give back to my community.
I want to add a bit more and I feel some areas are unneeded but I am not sure which.
I think you do a pretty good job describing the neighborhood you live in and I got a great picture of the community-coming together to help each other, etc... However, I think you are missing an opportunity to discuss how the neighborhoods impact who you are.
I would suggest making both of your paragraphs shorter and merging both into one. Then take the space you've just gained and use that to talk about how living in those neighborhoods have affected you. Right now you are focusing more about the neighborhood and then having one sentence at the end to discuss how it impacts you. That is basically a throwaway. You need to explain these better and give examples if you can. This will make your essay stronger and stand out more.
Why is valuing community and family important? Why is that a big part of who you are? How does it make you different from others who have not had these experiences? Same with the importance of education and privilege. Why are these a part of you? How do you express these?
HI Harvey, WELCOME to the Essay Forum Family. I hope you find this website to be helpful and credible towards the revision of your essays and also in discovering different writing techniques that will eventually hone your writing skills.
As I read through your essay, I must say, it was like reading the summary of your life. You started very smooth, or shall I say very soft, the fact that you manage to showcase a negative attribute of being a foreign kid into something positive, tells me that you are a person with perseverance, determination to make your dreams a reality.
Believe me, education is the best thing you can reward yourself and I'm not talking about the for corners of the classroom, take your neighborhood as an example, you have a lot of learning to take from your surroundings, this will not only guide you later on in life but will also give you that extra energy to be different and live on, regardless of the things going on around you. Overall, you were able to answer what is of the essay, furthermore, you created a different technique in approaching the essay. I wish to review more os your writing projects soon.
