Help on an deffered essay

MIT
Mon, 13 Dec 2004 21:09:13 +0000

Hello Parents,
I wrote this essay for my early action school(MIT) where I was deferred :(. I want to edit it a lot more because I don’t think its that great yet. Although writing is my weakness, I really want to make this essay stand out.
Any help with editing/formatting and writing style will be awesome. I plan to just revise the essay for most of my schools.
Thanks

School: Columbia
Essay Topic: Describe yourself and who you are.

__On a heavy monsoon day, I was walking home from school. The ground was full of puddles and earthworms of all sizes were crawling to seek shelter. My rubber gumboots were half-filled with water and I could hear the dripping sound as drops of water touched the flooded roads. Soon, I reached my building, picked up the mail and ran up to our apartment. Of course, all this time I had an umbrella neatly tucked in my school bag; I never saw the need to use it. I loved getting wet and playing in the rain.
_This was a typical day, and my thirteen-year-old mind had planned out an afternoon of Table Tennis with friends. My mother didn’t greet me as usual at the door that day, and by the seeping pieces of hushed conversation, I knew something serious was going on. Soon my dad approached me and announced, “We will be moving to America.”
_Ten months later, I was disembarking the plane at JFK international airport in New York City. My mind comprised of mixed emotions, but I was thoroughly ecstatic to experience my future endeavors. I have always aspired to be a doctor and my decision averred every time I saw my grandmother lying in bed, suffering from lymphoma, during joyous occasions. I optimistically looked at the future convinced that there would be myriad of opportunities in America to learn more about medicine. My mind wondered would I be the next Dr. J.C. Bose, who discovered several diseases in plants; or would I be the next Sir Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin
_With the arrival of autumn started my colorful school days. The first time we played baseball in Physical Education, I accidentally ran with the bat held firmly in my hands, a funny yet natural mistake since I was used to cricket. After the incident, I started to make a conscious effort to get accustomed to the New World and its cultural practices. In the midst of discovering my identity, I was helping my parents to reinvent theirs by becoming their cultural interpreter. On the road to this new journey, every step was accompanied with motivational values from my Indian culture: patience, gratitude, respect for elders, and worship of knowledge. I consider myself fortunate of having the opportunity to experience the two cultures simultaneously. I have now learned to emulate the best of both worlds creating a unique personality for myself. In this process, I have also learned to become a well-rounded person.
____My dreams and aspirations have not been shaped overnight. They have developed progressively. As I grew older, my love for medicine has grown stronger because of the increased exposure to the field. My parents have given me the greatest opportunity and resources by immigrating to America, which I might not have had in India. There are numerous challenges that usually accompany an immigration experience; mine seem negligible comparatively, perhaps because of my attitude towards it. I look at my journey not as a regret, but as the opportunity of a lifetime. My sister once said, “The world has not shaped you, but in fact you have shaped the world around yourself.” When I think back to the years that have passed by, I know I have been successful, however, the journey is not yet over. There is still the ultimate goal to achieve – the day when I fulfill my dream and become a doctor.