Any criticism is welcome! Many thanks.
Prompt：DESCRIBE THE WORLD YOU COME FROM-FOR EXAMPLE, YOUR FAMILY, COMMUNITY OR SCHOOL-TELL US HOW YOUR WORLD HAS SHAPED YOUR DREAMS AND ASPIRATIONS.
On TV screen, Zhao Benshan, a famous Chinese comedian, was making a parody of man on crutches. My families laughed, but I didn't think that was funny.
It reminded me of my classmate Chen, who had language barrier due to the brain damage in a car accident. He could only hear things with a hearing aid device connected to the back of his head, and he couldn't speak clearly. His deskmate, Wang, seemed quite enjoy provoking him. His favorite move was to pull over the device and stick to his own head, imitating Chen's mumble so loud that the whole class can laugh at him. Farce like that happened a lot. My classmates quite enjoyed it; they laugh happily, especially when Chen got furious.
I couldn't stand it and talked to Wang. I persuaded Wang not to jeer at Chen, but what if Chen steps out of the class to the society? He would get even more jeer. In China, there are more than 85 million disabled people, which make up 6 percent of whole population. Despite that high proportion, disabled people don't have enough respect and care. For instance, blind ways are always designed with many defects; a fire hydrant or bus stop may block the way. Walking along the road, I see people don't take care of blind ways. Some drivers park their car on them while snack bars put the desks and tables on them. I've interviewed several blind people and none of them said they had used blind ways. Government has invested a lot of money on building up those facilities. However, it seems more like a matter of appearance than actual helping.
Moreover, special education is underdeveloped in China. In some ways, Chen is fortunate because he can study in a high school. To those who are completely deaf, they can only go to special education school, where the education quality is much lower. Therefore, they cannot find a job and make money, leading to deeper privation of their already unfortunate life. A vicious circle is formed.
One night Chen was chatting with me in dormitory. He told me his favorite thing is travelling. Shanghai, Tibet and Hongkong were marked with his footprint. His dream was to be a writer who would write down the experience of travelling around the world. When he talked about this, his eyes emitted light that I've never seen before. That light, consisted of passion and aspiration, broke the fog of hardship in life and hit the innermost part of my mind, spurring me to jump on the way of exploring new therapy and auxiliary appliance to help Chen, and more disable teenagers to live a normal life, gain respect and pursue their dreams.
Dominic, you unfortunately missed the point of the prompt. You were not supposed to talk about the experience of another person whom you know about. You were supposed to talk about a family member, your community, or school as the world that you come from. From what I gather from your essay, you have not even come close to answering it. You keep talking about Chang rather than yourself. This essay is supposed to discuss you, not the way you observed and tried to help another person. This is about your world and how it shaped your dreams and aspirations. That means you need to delve into the people that you interacted with who influenced the person you have become along with the dreams and ambitions that you developed. That is not the focal point of this essay and therefore, it does not answer the prompt. You need to write a new essay that better suits the prompt. Maybe you can save this one for a different app that it may apply to in the future.
Thank you vangiespen！The essay does seem irrelevant to the prompt. I think I misunderstood the prompt for the very start.
So I write a new essay. How about this one? Does it sound a little cynical?
I come from a dreaming world.
I dreamt all kinds of dreams and I enjoyed travelling to various dreamlands. I set the first thing on my daily schedule as jumping out of the bed and writing down my dream last night on my "dream journal". Then I would soak myself in Zhou Gong Jie Meng, an ancient Chinese book that analyzes dreams, to find an answer to my dreaming world.
Sigmund Freud was the king in that world. His The Interpretation of Dreams was the scepter. I ran into my king when I wander around in a bookstore. After I opened the first page of that book, I realized that I have to follow his commands: there was the answer that I had been searching for years. It told me that through repeated tests we could find some basic rules of the formation of dreams and we must combine psychoanalysis with those test results. Inspired by Freud, I designed a three-month experiment to explore the factors contributing to dream forming and found out that occurrence of dream may directly correlated with the softness of mattress.
I also come from a dream-breaking world.
When I read my experimental paper to classmates in school, they jeered at me and said I was only a weird guy who was day-dreaming. Then I brought it to my biology teacher, Ms. Su. She carelessly turned over the pages, and said, "You are a student. A student's task is to study. Do you think you can get good marks on your final when you are distracted by those irrelevant things? This cannot be called science at all."
What is science? Is remembering formula or solving math problems science? No one in my school told me what it really is. They didn't bother to think about it. All they thought was to make their scores higher, higher and higher. Nobody cared what you think since textbooks have all answers. They don't have other choices. In a world where scores are the only criteria to judge whether a student is excellent or not, if you do great in exams, you understand the science; otherwise, you don't even know what it looks like.
I came from a world full of dreams, but they were broken rapidly. I am eager to enter a new world where I explore the world of dream freely, where I can appreciate the beauty of true science.
Dominic, the essay is better now since it is fully answering the prompt. I have a suggestion though. Rather than explaining how you come from two dream worlds, why don't you just concentrate on one dream world and fully develop that discussion? I feel that the more effective dream world in this case is your second dream world where dreams are broken. By discussing that world, you will be able to properly showcase the development of your dreams and ambitions based upon the obstacles that presented itself in this "world" which is a waking world of broken dreams and promises. I feel that it has a better connection with the reader and resonates well in terms of the prompt. Discuss how the dream breaking world inspired you to never be held back or stay within your comfort zone. Explain that the more you were told you "could not", the more you pushed yourself to prove them wrong. That is why the dream breaking world is the world you come from. It inspired who you became. Does that work for you?
Thanks a lot. Sorry I didn't reply you promptly since I've been working on filling out the application. Following your advise, I've revised my essay and submitted it. Thanks again!
