personal statement! please help me
Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 9:28 pm
ok, so this is my first draft. nobody's looked at it yet so be brutal!!! shy of telling me that i'm an idiot, i'll accept any criticism. thanks.
Growing up with an alcoholic mother and a workaholic father had an impact on my decisions as a teenager. Of course every teenager strives to be as rebellious as they possibly can be, but being given a citation at “senior week” isn’t a situation that any teenager wants to find him or herself in. Needless to say, I did find myself in this unfortunate situation and I was given the option of either paying a hefty fine or participating in a community service program. For me there was no choice: not because I favored one over the other, but because mom and dad wouldn’t bail me out this time. I signed up for the community service and cleared my calendar of every fun event I had planned for the next month.
The organization to which I was assigned was a local food center, Manna, that distributed food to people in need. I figured the days would be long, the work would be tedious and boring. I went into the experience with the most negative of attitudes. The way I saw it, I was here to work my hours, send my little paper to the Montgomery County court system and then I was off to live the rest of my life. But the way I saw it wasn’t exactly how it happened.
Up until that point, I lived in a very nice bubble of a world. I lived in a upper-class suburban community, with a doctor for a father and an elementary school teacher for a mother. I played a $1,500 dollar guitar. I was given a car when I turned 16. My house literally had a white picket fence around it. I was the archetypal American teenager. Along with all of these attributes, I also had my fair share of stereotypes. And it’s important to understand that these stereotypes stemmed from being sheltered rather than being a supremacist. One of these preconceived notions I had was that all people in need (i.e. homeless people, poor people, etc.) were lazy, addicted to drugs, uneducated, and socially unacceptable. I was repulsed by them. Never in a million years would I have expected community service, let alone assigned community service, to change my assumptions about people in need. Contrary to my expectations, that’s exactly what happened.
The first day I worked my time was spent separating the good cucumbers from the rotten cucumbers. I realized that these people were eating the food that didn’t “make the cut” at the grocery stores. All of the bread, milk and eggs we gave away had sell-by dates that had passed two days ago. I honestly felt sorry for the people who were going to have to eat this food. But it wasn’t until they actually came to collect their box of food that I felt true sympathy for them. The box of food might have lasted my family one day; it was supposed to last a poor family one week.
What made me feel even worse was that the people who were walking in the front door holding their food vouchers didn’t fall into my predetermined idea of what they would be. None of them were holding crack-pipes, in fact many of them had children with them. None of them were rude or bitter, most of them were genuinely grateful: a quality that I had never personally experienced. I had been given everything in the world, but I had never been grateful. Their gratefulness astounded me. How could somebody with no money and possibly no home be so grateful? It was that moment that I called into question my whole worldview. Just because I have money and a big house is by no means a gauge of how happy my life is. These supposed “needy” people showed me a better way of viewing the world. In the land of the poor, generosity is the only currency worth trading. On one of my last days at Manna, a lady said to me, “I really want you to understand how much you all are helping me and my family” and she offered me a dollar as a tip for helping bring her food to her car. To this day, that is the most rewarding dollar I have ever earned.
that's all i have so far. i think i need to strengthen my conclusion a little bit and maybe tighten up all of the writing. but again, that's what second drafts are for.
Growing up with an alcoholic mother and a workaholic father had an impact on my decisions as a teenager. Of course every teenager strives to be as rebellious as they possibly can be, but being given a citation at “senior week” isn’t a situation that any teenager wants to find him or herself in. Needless to say, I did find myself in this unfortunate situation and I was given the option of either paying a hefty fine or participating in a community service program. For me there was no choice: not because I favored one over the other, but because mom and dad wouldn’t bail me out this time. I signed up for the community service and cleared my calendar of every fun event I had planned for the next month.
The organization to which I was assigned was a local food center, Manna, that distributed food to people in need. I figured the days would be long, the work would be tedious and boring. I went into the experience with the most negative of attitudes. The way I saw it, I was here to work my hours, send my little paper to the Montgomery County court system and then I was off to live the rest of my life. But the way I saw it wasn’t exactly how it happened.
Up until that point, I lived in a very nice bubble of a world. I lived in a upper-class suburban community, with a doctor for a father and an elementary school teacher for a mother. I played a $1,500 dollar guitar. I was given a car when I turned 16. My house literally had a white picket fence around it. I was the archetypal American teenager. Along with all of these attributes, I also had my fair share of stereotypes. And it’s important to understand that these stereotypes stemmed from being sheltered rather than being a supremacist. One of these preconceived notions I had was that all people in need (i.e. homeless people, poor people, etc.) were lazy, addicted to drugs, uneducated, and socially unacceptable. I was repulsed by them. Never in a million years would I have expected community service, let alone assigned community service, to change my assumptions about people in need. Contrary to my expectations, that’s exactly what happened.
The first day I worked my time was spent separating the good cucumbers from the rotten cucumbers. I realized that these people were eating the food that didn’t “make the cut” at the grocery stores. All of the bread, milk and eggs we gave away had sell-by dates that had passed two days ago. I honestly felt sorry for the people who were going to have to eat this food. But it wasn’t until they actually came to collect their box of food that I felt true sympathy for them. The box of food might have lasted my family one day; it was supposed to last a poor family one week.
What made me feel even worse was that the people who were walking in the front door holding their food vouchers didn’t fall into my predetermined idea of what they would be. None of them were holding crack-pipes, in fact many of them had children with them. None of them were rude or bitter, most of them were genuinely grateful: a quality that I had never personally experienced. I had been given everything in the world, but I had never been grateful. Their gratefulness astounded me. How could somebody with no money and possibly no home be so grateful? It was that moment that I called into question my whole worldview. Just because I have money and a big house is by no means a gauge of how happy my life is. These supposed “needy” people showed me a better way of viewing the world. In the land of the poor, generosity is the only currency worth trading. On one of my last days at Manna, a lady said to me, “I really want you to understand how much you all are helping me and my family” and she offered me a dollar as a tip for helping bring her food to her car. To this day, that is the most rewarding dollar I have ever earned.
that's all i have so far. i think i need to strengthen my conclusion a little bit and maybe tighten up all of the writing. but again, that's what second drafts are for.
