For real this time. I need help from every person who has been admitted into a university. I need all your advice! Thank you.
Here's what I have so far. I wish I could link to a downloadable attatchment or something but I cannot. So please read this essay and tell me how I may improve or change it, thank you
It has been about eighteen years since I was born in New York City, and I have spent roughly the last eight of those years in what I still call a new home, here in Clearwater Beach, Florida. My life has followed the clichéd and semi-charmed life of a teenager growing up in a very nice American neighborhood, although I am black.
I spend my falls playing football, and my springs running track. I spend my weeknights doing homework and my weekends at movies, parties, and friends' houses. Where I tend to stray from the cliché of the typical teenager is in my ability to be myself. It is with thanks to three random individuals, people to whom I never thought I would owe anything, that I was reminded of the importance of never compromising who I am just to make somebody else happy.
Somehow, standing 6'1, 190 pounds, and playing two sports religiously makes me fall into the category of the stereotypical athlete. Historically, high school athletes are supposed to make jeering remarks at kids who do not play sports and act differently from them. They are even supposed to poke fun at the kids who play sports, but do not get the playing time. I was never one to agree with this sort of thing, however, I almost did back in my sophomore year, because all of the other athletes were doing it. Well, all of them except these three seniors on the football team. These were all guys that were going on to play college ball somewhere and it is to them that I owe what will probably be the greatest lesson that I ever learned as a teenager.
It was during assembly, and all I was concerned about was getting to my break period, which was next. That was when Mr. Stallworth, the director of the drama program at my school, got on stage and said that there would be a special performance by the chorus. The audience groaned, because they knew this meant that break would be cut short. The stage lights kicked on, the curtain dropped and I will never forget what I saw next. The three burliest, meanest, and best seniors on our football team had decided to join the chorus. Seeing them up there singing about being someone's buttercup made me want to laugh until the tears ran, but I quickly decided it would not be wise to do so for fear of what might happen to my little sophomore self come practice that afternoon.
What overcame me next was a sensation of profound respect for those guys. They had crossed a line that the Hollywood gods and the higher-ups in society had dubbed as a taboo. I had always thought of them as being the stereotypical jocks, but seeing them belting their lungs out on stage proved to me that they were indeed more than just athletes.
What those seniors do not and may never know is that they changed me for a thousand lifetimes over. Seeing them up there with students who I never thought they would associate with made me realize that the only barriers the human race struggles to cross are the ones it creates. Since I saw that performance, I have made a point of talking to and hanging out with kids who I would not have normally associated myself with because of that invisible line. Today, I realize that if I had held myself back from different people, I would have been going along with the crowd. In essence, I would have compromised my own morals and values because someone else thought that they just were not good enough.
Thanks to those three seniors, I know that it is ok for me to be the king of my own life, instead of the pawn of someone else's.
So I made the paragraphs very easy to read. If you came into this thread, you owe it to me to leave some advice on college applications essays.
Thanks everyone, I'll back in the thread regularly, I'd love college graduate's opinions on getting in. Thank you!!
I don't care if you think it's too long, ha ha!! Go back to learn. Learn to read. Learn to read a title that says "long read' before complaining about something being too many words. PEACE