@incogneato I just went to a UC Application workshop at my school hosted by someone from the transfer center at UC Berkeley and she talked to us about writing about personal hardships in the PS. I had always received conflicting information about it, that I should stay away from it, but yesterday the lady told me that that’s not necessarily true.
That if you’re going to write about a hardship in your life to not create so much a sob story about it, but talk about how it strengthened you and how it made you stronger, not so much about how terrible it was and how it made your life miserable. Focus on the empowerment, and the positive aspects of something that may have negatively affected your life at some point.