Im answering both prompts below:
1. Discuss any events or special circumstances that have affected your academic record, as well as any adversities you have overcome.
2. Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you
I would really appreciate any advice or help!!
"The growing child must derive a vitalizing sense of reality from the awareness that his individual way of mastering experience is a successful variant of a group identity and is in accord with its space-time and life plan." Identity versus confusion is the fifth stage of Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development. According to German psychologist Erikson, this is a vital process to forming an identity and a sense of direction for one's life. This stage is when adolescents develop a sense of self and personal identity. To do this many adolescents seek a place in the world by "trying on" different roles, activities, and behaviors.
The one role I tried on my junior year of high school turned out to be one of the most significant experiences of my life so far. As I began to lose friend by friend, due to a complicated drama, I began to fall into an unhealthy lifestyle. I had lost all my friends, and felt the need to change to fit in and make new friends. To summarize the series of unfortunate events junior year, my personality deteriorated every day. I did not respect my friends, family, or myself. I began to believe that this is who I had become and who I would be, and there would be no changing it. My old friends remember this time of my life and describe it as, "literally the worst thing that ever happened to you. You went from being the nice funny girl that I'd been friends with since the eighth grade to becoming this selfish, awful person that I couldn't even recognize. You suddenly just started acting so crazy. I couldn't keep up," or "I think you were going through a time in your life where you didn't know who was yours and weren't seeing your future as something positive. You weren't looking at how what you were doing was going to affect how colleges saw your and more importantly what your friends saw you as."
The semester continued, and deep down I knew that this is not the person I wanted to be. I began to see a therapist and I started taking anti-depression pills. But the best medication I got was going to Brazil for winter break. I did not tell anyone I was going to Brazil, I disappeared. When I got there, I was surrounded by my large family who loved me and supported me. After being in Brazil for a month, I almost returned to my normal self again.
Unlike many other teenagers, I was able to make the conscious decision to change who I was completely and the path I was on while in Brazil. I came to the conclusion that I wanted to be a success, not a failure, and the lifestyle I was in was not going to lead me in that direction. I fought to regain confidence, get myself back on track, improve my grades, and be myself again. It was not easy to completely change who I was but I never gave up. I knew that was always a choice, and I made the choice and effort to be the hardworking, determined, and self-confident young woman I am today. The responsibility I took for myself and my failures provided me the power to change my life.
This is really sad. D: I'm sorry for what you've gone through but I'm glad that you overcame this challenge. Remember to use past tense as this happened in the past not present.
Also, try to cut the dialogue by your friends. Instead say something like: "All my friends thought bla bla bla..."
