College Admissions Essay: The Power To Change My Life

Each individual is created to live their life uniquely. Each person has their own beliefs and opinions. They shape how one perceives others and how one affects others whether it be personally,locally, or globally.

My Life, I don't know what to do with it… it’s just a mess of this, and that, and the other. All of my life, Horrible, like I should just be tossed aside. I don’t have good grades, I’m not good at any sports. I’m not good at Anything…

Former baseball player Tommy Lasorda once said, “The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person’s determination.” The journey of our life is full of winding paths and concrete obstacles whose sole goal is to slow us down, and to attempt to block us from reaching our ultimate goal in life, whatever that may be. These barriers are there for several different reasons, whether it be mental or physical. Sometimes these obstacles are motivated by fear, other times they exist simply because we have to make a decision, and that decision can be life changing. But through our determination, and through our perseverance, we can achieve what these barriers told us was impossible, and can pursue the path in our life that leads us to our ultimate self. Throughout my life, I have had thousands of barriers stand in my path. And the only way I was able to defeat them was through conquering my fears, and breaking my limits in order to achieve excellence.

Waking up that morning May 21 2015 with a big smile on my face saying today I made it! Senior year was kind of a struggle for me trying to make top 10% of my class, work 2 jobs and attend extracurricular activities and groups such as ROTC French club ,Spanish etc. and manage a social life .It was a lot on my shoulders being that I goofed off my other years. Each day that year I would wake up and motivate myself to keep pushing and pushing to I reach my goal .There was nothing stopping me I mean nothing at all people would talk saying things like “oh he’s not going to pass you”. Friends would doubt me but that just pushed me to grind even harder .yeah I’m not gone lie there was many days I wanted to fall back into my old ways and skip

The concept of music has been a fascinating topic for me since I was able to sing along to Hannah Montana and High School Musical, and maybe even before that. It’s the one thing that has stayed consistent for me since day one. When I was struggling to figure out who I was and who I wanted to be, my mind went blank. I wasn’t involved in any sport or hobby, and I didn’t enjoy much, not even the security of my own bedroom. For a long time, I felt lost. When I was given the option to learn an instrument in middle school, it didn’t occur to me that I was going to change my perspective on life or that I finally found something that I belonged in. It was a matter of time before I realized exactly what I had done.

Throughout my life I have battled against mayor struggles. Struggles which to some may seem like it was nothing and to others it may look like it`s a horrible situation. My entire childhood I lived in my home country of Puerto Rico, and honestly had never thought about the outside world. As time passed, the more crime progressed to levels that could never be seen in America. Crime had become unbearable and unescapable, so much that stepping on someone’s shoe on accident would lead to that person shooting you or threatening to do so. I as a child could see what was happening, and I could see how my countries problems had affected me greatly. Shootings right behind my house almost every day, 9-year-old`s bringing guns and pocket knives to school, people breaking in to my school to kill students selling drugs. The biggest problem that affected me was that my father, being a kind-hearted man, risked his life to save two students who were

I was born on September the 7th of 1994 in the San Francisco Bay area, not very far from Silicon Valley. The year I was born President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade agreement with Mexico and Canada which helped to stimulate economic growth about twenty years ago. Living in California made my Dad the open-minded liberal that he is today, and because of his love for discussing politics I was raised listening to him have friendly debates with my very republican grandpa over every economic issue from climate change to healthcare. For about a year and a half after I was born my parents, older brother Daniel, golden retriever sandy, and I all lived in a classic colonial style home just south of Santa Clara Valley. My father was the breadwinner in our family working as an engineer for Portola Packaging. A job he was offered not long after graduation from a small private engineering school in upstate New York called Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. My mother also worked full time but as a loan underwriter. After being offered a great relocation package by Portola to the east coast my parents quickly decided to pack up our house and move to Pittsburg Pennsylvania. In addition to being closer to our extended families they also believed that raising a family in Pennsylvania was far

My past, present, and future. This is the journey of my life. Where I’ve been, where I’m at, and where I’m going. My journey began on July 28, 2000, at St. Margret’s South Hospital in Dyer, Indiana. Lance Collins who is a paramedic, and Christine Collins who is a registered nurse, became the proud parents of the 6lb. 9oz. 21 inch long baby boy, who they named Liam Hunter Collins. On November 30, 2002, I became a big brother when my sister Taylor Collins was born. I have been a lifelong resident of Northwest Indiana and I’ve had some pretty amazing adventures and accomplishments so far. I became a proud pet owner when my bichon frise Max, came to live with us on April 5th, 2006. On June 30, 2006 my dad took me to my very first Taekwondo lesson. I quickly fell in love with martial arts, I worked really hard, dedicated myself, and I received the rank of 1st degree black belt when I was only eight years old. I have been playing

This forced me analyze my life thus far, to recognize my fears and what I hold dear. It’s only been sixteen (one month till seventeen) years in this carcass, but I already feel like an entire life has flown by. It was like a prerequisite of actually watching my life flash before my eyes. This project was nice to sit back and look at what a social mess I am (one of my most favorite pastimes). But also, only being sixteen, I don’t hold what many would believe to be true values, dreams, fears, and identity. Nevertheless, this is what I have so far.

“Why are you so shy?” people always asked me. ”Shy”. It’s a word that followed me for as long as I can remember. In elementary school, all the kids would play sports during recess, but I’d stand by the side and look at them. At most of my parent-teacher conferences, teachers would use words like shy and quiet. But I was totally sick of it. ”I have to make some changes,” I said to myself.

Steve Jobs once said, “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” Life is about changing yourself over and over again until you're happy, then changing yourself again because you're no longer happy -- and that's okay. Often, once you make a choice in life, people will put you in a box, shutting you out from all light, resulting in a misshapen, brittle, and weak mind and heart. The greatest nourishment for them is change, and once someone takes away the ability for the mind and heart to transform, they take away your life. When I was 14, naïve and insensitive, I learned the value of change. My life did change, slowly morphing me into

I grew up in a house located in a city named Hallandale, a not so quite poverty-stricken African-American dominated neighborhood of South Florida. Everyday news reports of someone either dying, getting shot, or arrested from the neighborhood appeared on my front screen. I lived in a one story house with only three bedrooms and ten of my family members. I always considered my home as the most beautiful house on the block — a heavenly oasis in a cesspool of dilapidation. You knew my house because my grandmother had a lion on the outside of it that stood through every storm Florida threw its way. To me that lion represented the courage and strength of people in my neighborhood held despite the hard ships surrounding it. Every Sunday my grandma cooked for those in need.

I love almost anything that has milk in it. Cream cheese, iced coffee, milkshakes, and cheese . But unfortunately the universe is against me and has decided to make milk irritate my asthma. So whenever I eat something with a reasonable amount of milk product in it, one of two things occurs. Situation one- I am completely fine and can go about my day knowing I have won this round against a weird cow byproduct. Situation two- The strange cow liquid/solid choses to take control of my throat and lungs, causing me unable to breathe normally for a while, and usually ruining a small part of my day. In fact before writing this, I ate a rather small amount of chocolate ice cream that decided to give me a cough and a itchy throat as revenge. Regardless, I have survived to tell the tale and because of my choice, a small part of my life has been improved.

Have you ever been so overwhelmed with life that you feel like you're on your own, and have no one to turn to? Or have you ever been caught in a situation where you knew you were doing wrong, however you still continued to do it anyways? Well I was caught up in both of these situations. I found myself contemplating where to go, and what to do.

So here I sit at the "Doubletree Hotel" in Syracuse New York, as I go through