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Couple of thoughts:

(1) You need to tighten up your grammar and language. A lot of your sentences are unnecessarily long and convoluted. For example, this one in particular stands out:

Teaching students about government, the Constitution and the courts, and working to instill in them the value of civic participation, even in the face of a sometimes frustrating system, I’ve grown more interested not just in teaching the issues but in the issues themselves, and convinced that I ought to listen myself to some of the advice I give to my students: if you don’t get involved, someone else will.

(2) You don't talk enough about yourself. Your entire first paragraph is just setting a scene, which I am generally opposed to unless it's a really short paragraph. I know some people have pulled this off successfully, but more often than not, it's excessive. By the end of the first paragraph, I'd like to know where this essay is headed. I don't really care that you're worrying about students phones going off or whispering. This is a personal statement, not your personal diary of thoughts.

(3) Building off of what I said at the end of (2), you throw in a lot of descriptions that fail to enhance your essay. While there is a lot of value to constructing vivid descriptions and painting a picture for the reader, you aren't really capturing that in the right way. Typically, that is most effective in setting a context in which you demonstrate some sort of positive traits for adcomms to be interested in. I.e. describing some horrendous conditions you were in before you a, b, c saved some lives, etc etc etc. You just throw in descriptions seemingly for the hell of it. For example, here:

Everyone should pack a lunch, and I told them to dress like they were going to see a relative they hadn’t seen in a long time. I put together a packet they could take with them, with pictures of the old and new maps and a who’s who gallery of General Assembly faces.

The bolded part literally does nothing for the reader. Which leads to my final point, which is related to (2)

(4) Tell me more interesting things. For example you say "I put together a packet they could take with them, with pictures of the old and new maps and a who’s who gallery of General Assembly faces." Is this supposed to be impressive? What are you trying to show adcomms here? That you can put together a packet of things from Google? Think more about what the things you are saying say about you.


That's my feedback. Sorry it's a bit crass, but i'm tired, about to go to sleep, and admittedly a grouch in such contexts. Hope it's helpful.