College Admissions Essay: What Makes Me Who I Am

I leaned my head against the car window watching the leaves blowing around, just trying to distract myself from a slight feeling of emptiness inside of me. This feeling seemed all too familiar to me. My family and I had all of our possessions packed into boxes yet again. We were moving to a new state. At this point, up rooting our lives and starting over almost seemed more like a hobby than anything more significant. However, I have just now come to realize that what seemed like constant inconveniences in the past, have actually taught me how to be the best me with influences all around the country. Living in three different states and five homes may have been a challenge, but it provided me with memories that I wouldn’t trade for anything because those moments created the person I am today.

I’m awesome. It’s true. Everyone who meets me will agree, and by the end of this essay, you will too. I am from the small town of Mexico, Missouri where I haved lived my whole life. I was born on January 4, 2000. I am the millennium baby because I was the first baby born in 2000 in the the town of Mexico and I got to ride home in a limo. I went to elementary school at Hawthorne and then to the Middle School and now I am a Junior at The Mexico High School. I play basketball, football, and baseball. This summer I worked at the City Pool as a lifeguard. Last summer I worked at Pearl Motor Company for my dad. That job was definitely a lot harder than being a lifeguard, but I enjoyed both jobs. One of my favorite hobbies is hunting. I love to Turkey hunt and also deer hunt. I’ve killed three turkeys and one deer. One of my other hobbies is snow skiing. I usually get to go to Colorado every year with my church and I've been three times with my family. This is just a little bit of who I am.

Regardless of the fact that I was a dare devil as a child, I have learned to take chances, be my own person and to take on as many adventures as possible. As a child I would always be doing something, whether I would be talking to new people or going to find a rock to jump off of. It wasn’t always a good quality to have because I would take my adventures too far and put myself in a situation where I could come to be hurt. Nevertheless, I am still alive functioning and it made me the person I am today.

This is the question that every college wants to know. But with the endless amount of applicants, distancing yourself from the crowd seems like an almost impossible feat. Throughout my years of school, academics have always been what set me apart, but at a college like Harvard, stellar grades and extracurriculars are expected. On paper, it might be difficult to distinguish me from the other 40,000 applicants. Just based on probability, there is bound to be another Japanese boy with divorced parents who lives in California. It’s easy to blend into the crowd if I described myself with these types of generalized titles and traits.

Ever since I was little I have aspired to be something great in life, a chef, a pro. soccer player, and an artist. I still hold on to those dreams in hopes they will come true. All of these dreams shape who I am today. I play soccer for “Charlotte Soccer Academy” and previously for the “Waddell Soccer Team”. Both have kept me being a team player and a stronger leader. I go to visual arts camp over the summer and try to use creativity at any moment possible. I love making cupcakes and baking which also allow me to be creative. I have finally realized that all of these dreams originated from my family. I pursued soccer, like my parents did throughout their lives. I continue drawing, like my mother and father did until it became their life and jobs. I am still love making cakes and cupcakes every weekend, just like how i've seen my grandmother make them. Life has a very strange and mind-boggling way of turning out. I know that sounds cheesy, but it is really true.

A person’s personality is like clay; it can be shaped and reshaped based on who and what they allow to shape it. In youthhood, a person tends to develops a basis for who they will be, so it is important that we are especially cautious during this time and only let the best people and things shape us. Moreover, I learned the values of charity, compassion, helpfulness, honesty, hard work, dedication, patience, loyalty, and fairness from the people that shaped me.

“We know what we are, but not what we may be” (William Shakespeare). Life is full of unexpected surprises you never know what life will bring or take away from you, so cherish every moment you have. You got to have limits, goals and aspirations to go somewhere in life. There will be obstacles and struggles that you will have to go through but those moments are what make you who you are. In my life I’ve learned, heard and seen several things that have made me who I am today. For those reasons I have set myself limits, goals and aspirations that I wish to accomplish throughout my life. In one word, I would describe myself to be ambitious! I always set some kind of goals towards myself.

What makes me unique? This is a question that many people may ask themselves over the years. Upon pondering upon it, I realized that a lot of us our the same, especially in a school setting. We wake up, eat breakfast, go to all of our classes and go home. Even extra curricular have an abundant amount of people attending. So what makes us unique? Looking around and thinking about students, nothing obvious stands out. So I started looking at commonalities. Most people love gossip, so rumors are always a hot topic in a highschool. Upon thinking about rumors, it really shows how much people are judged by these stigmas made by other people. What makes me different from other people is my ability to never believe rumors.

When we were traveling to America we faced many difficulties, but once we made it to our Aunt's house in Virginia we knew it was going to be a great, yet grueling experience. When I first started going to school it seemed as if I was on another planet. Everyone looked different, spoke a strange language, and had a distinct mindset then me; the life of a kid should seem easy because there isn’t anything to worry about, yet worrying about everything was my coping mechanism. When I entered middle school depression and anger hit me like a freight train, so much to the point where I almost committed suicide. Fighting my so called friends for “fun” and not caring about my future was my life for those

My name is Hailey Lynn Jones. My favorite sports are volleyball, softball and dance. I’ve been playing volleyball for one year now and i love it! Its probably my favorite sport. Ive been playing softball since fourth grade and its really fun to play. I usually play first or second base. Dance i've been doing dance since I was five years old and I used to do ballet and jazz, but now I do hip hop.

In the first paragraph I was attempting to illustrate the moment and gather the memories from that day into a few short sentences. The words I chose and the way I organized my paragraph was in hopes of reflecting the nostalgia that I was feeling while looking at the picture. There is also a strange feeling that I felt while looking at the picture, because it defines a moment that now feels as if I had imagined it. Therefore, while writing my personal essay I felt the need to recover this and other misplaced moments. The entire concept that a previous self may be a stranger to me is something that I feel needs exploring, although I also felt, while writing, that there are certain fundamental aspects of a person that never change. After rereading my essay multiple times, I am pleased with how I was able to achieve my goal. Although I feel as if I could have used more detail to describe myself then, in that particular moment, I believe that by describing what has changed over the course of the years proved to be just as effective. From the beginning of the essay through to the end, it is easy for readers to track the progress I have made from an elementary school student to a high school student. Each paragraph I began to develop a little more as a person and student which then lead me to succeed in my first few weeks as a

“You never understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird. When I was nine years old my family and I moved from Marshall, Texas to Harleton, Texas. Making this move had a significant impact on my childhood due to the fact that I was taken from the town I had spent the first nine years of my life in only to begin an entirely new life in another town I had never even been to. I was taken from my friends and family, and I was faced with having to adjust to a whole new world. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this move and the experiences I would have would shape my life and make me the person that I am today.

When it comes to my deepest thoughts, I always worry if I can either do it or if I’m even good enough. I have always struggled in school and had those teachers that told me that I couldn’t do it or I was succeed, but that just made me push harder and that is what motivates me. Along with that I had have students brought me down and that is what ticked me off, I had either people who thought they knew me or people who didn't even know me say horrible things.

I will never have my father’s smile or my mother’s eyes. My skin tone will also never match their pale skin even though I am their daughter. Although my siblings and I are all adopted from China, growing up in this unique family dynamic played an integral role in my development. I have grown to realize my ethnicity and upbringing are not labels used by my peers to define me. My background has helped me push through social barriers to build friendships. It challenged me to impel beyond the world’s “black and white” boundaries to see a society that thrives on diversity. My multicultural background equipped me with experiences that gave me a new perspective on privilege and responsibility, preparing me to overcome obstacles in the global industry

Who am I? That’s hard to say since there is no clear definition of what makes a person. I could be my occupations: a student, dancer, and swimmer. Maybe I’m my emotions like happy, sad, and angry. I could be where I live, or what my goals are and how I plan to reach them. Most likely, I’m a compilation of all of these because people are complex and are not two dimensionally made. Where I am, how I act, and what I do make me who I am and I would not be Veronica without living in this house in Portland, Texas and having aspirations that seem to be more impossible than seizing the moon. I am Veronica, but I can also be whatever I need to be depending on where I live, what I do, and how I change my goals.