At the beginning of the process I started with the concept of the creation of a person caused by the conditions that person is in. I Liked the concept and my own personal stories which are still included but my topic grew deeper when I realized the relationship between the words I was using and who I actually was. I realized that words got fuzzy as people over simplify them and as my humanities teacher Lori reminded me so are people. This new topic started strong but because I did not plan the essay before hand became enabled in the last few paragraphs. The feedback Lori gave me about the incoherence of my essay made me go back to the drawing board and make an outline for the paragraphs. I improved on the skill of being prepared and preparing myself for success. Faced with the word limit after my new planned writing was complete I went through and cut out parts of my essay that were unnecessary. This gave me the time to think about concise ways to express complicated concepts. I learned how to speak less to say more. For example my old essay had a line that said " After the divorce I switched houses every week". I turned this into " the divorced instilled alternating houses weekly". Examples like this that cut down excessive words helped me to meet the word limit and make the second half of my essay more coherent and concise. The more I worked with the feedback I had given the more ideas I had on my own to make the wording better. I am glad I had the opportunity to revise my initial ideas.
Final College Essay:
Prompt: What does being an adult mean to you?
Next year I plan on taking a gap year in South America living on farms and backpacking until later going back to school: Hawaii Pacific University , Western Washington University, Alaska Pacific, University of Hawaii, Montana State University.
Language creates the people that created the language People and language are symbiotic but both remain deeply misunderstood. Do we ever really know the meaning of words distorted by schemas? For example with “love” the word travels out of my mouth and into a byzantine conduit in another’s brain. They think of personal love or lack of love and my experience is no longer mine, it’s theirs, or at least the only way they can perceive it. If MLK’s words could fuel a revolution, maybe I can use mine to form a connection with you right now. Maybe together we can exceed oversimplified interpretations of the language and those that use it.
As I peel back the wordsthat describe who I am I peel back whoI am.
I was born at the turn of the century quickly after the last leaf dove from the tree into a pool of warm colors. My soul blossomed in 2011, the day I learned that my laundry fairy, personal chef, environmental activist, appointment making, never missing sports games, mother, didn’t have super powers. She was a superhero, but she wasn’t perfect and more importantly she wasn’t happy. This became the initial layer to the word adult. As a kid the word adult held meanings of carefully composed lifestyles. The love and career you found was forever, and you would always strive to make the best choices. At 11 the meaning to the word changed as my parents split up and pieces of my world crumbled with their marriage. My mother cried in front of me, and I finally got to meet her as a human with pain. It was no longer reasonable to cut out stencils of grown bodies and plaster them with “adult”. It now involved suffering and as I grappled with aging myself became aware of the responsible for not only myself but my happiness. As adult switched file cabinets within brain I saw the file cabinets changing too in response opening up my mind to what makes me happy.
When do our parents stop taking care of us so we can take care of them?
Now I was an adult, but only because of the significance in the number eighteen. Eighteen equals adult; it was simple math, but as approached it I realised who I was was just as complicated the “adult” label.
The divorce instilled alternating houses weekly which caused me to obtain extreme adaptability in areas among work and school. This versatile quality eventually sparked hunger I gained to excel in Costa Rica as an environmental intern . My fluctuating childhood drove devotion to explore new lifestyles. Living coast to coast in Latin America, carrying out the indepences of my interpretation of adulthood was a battle with great reward. I realized being an adult was getting to choose my own path--I just had to know where I wanted it to lead. The hardest realization was getting there had to be up to me. My quenching thirst for the oceans and rivers of Latin America created my personal connection with environmental activism just as my mom had. I found what I wanted my life to impact had to impact me.
Most work under the pretense of creating new. I want to uphold what’s already here so it lasts. Creation comes from existing preservation.
As the title adult lead to concepts superior than myself, the word again grew deeper. The relationship containing us and what’s beyond us only became clear as my journey began to feel cynical due to greater problems we face. With “adult” comes “community member”. Another word often just grazing the surface and complexing with age. The relationship with others and our surroundings was now in play and community embodies all encountered. I joined the world and the world grew colossal. Oversimplification of the words we use misinterprets people the words intend to capture. I cannot change the world the complexities of the without defining words and the people that bring change.