I changed my essay quite a lot, any suggestions are welcome :) Thank you
UC Prompt II : Describe the world you come from - for example, your family, community or school - and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations
My friends always thought it was weird that in one conversation my family and I incorporated different languages, but this is who I am. It is hard to categorize my ethnicity and to specify exactly my culture since it is a synthesis of my past. I have an intercultural family, where my mom was born in Russia and my father in Ukraine. Living in the collapsing Soviet Union, they started a life together extremely poor, trying to make a living through the merit of education. After moving to Israel my mom gave birth to my brother and me, and we lived there for 5 years. Speaking fluent Russian and Hebrew, I moved with my family to California to a small apartment. I did not yet grasp the new world we were about to live in. I remember noticing a pattern of about every 2 to 3 years moving from one apartment to another and me despising my parents for making me change schools and friends. Until 2006 when my parents were finally content with the level of education in the neighboring schools, we settled into a two story house. Because of their determination to get me to a good public school, I find the value of education to be one of the most important aspects in my life, making my high school teachers and peers a large influence in the way I think and interpret certain things. Through them I learned the importance of hard work ethics in everything I set to accomplish. With that set of mind I am determined to make my aspirations a reality.
I am tempted to write in great detail about my travels throughout the US and Europe. . I was in love with each and every place mostly because of the rich history the locations presented, and the diverse natives. I enjoyed speaking with diverse people across different cultures and was able to find the common ground with ultraorthodox Jews in Israel, deeply Catholic young men in Ireland and courageously atheist girls in post-Soviet Russia. While traveling I promise to never judge others without learning about their culture. Knowledge is the key to everything and I feel like in the world many conflicts occur because some people don't have all the information. I can see my future in learning and enjoying diverse cultures, showing my engagement in trying to make a change in the world. I plan to major in International Relations. By traveling and learning about the world, I hope to be able to affect inter-relations between different nations and, hopefully, foreign policy, by trying to limit war and unnecessary violence and finding non-violent means to resolve conflicts. Growing up I may have been conflicted with my mixture of heritages, but now I cherish it because it has built me into who I am and has definitely pushed me towards my aspirations for my future.
The way you start your second paragraph, "I am tempted to write in great detail about my travels throughout the US and Europe" makes it sound like you were going to do this, but thought of something that was more influential than that. Except, you actually did write about your travels and the cultures. So, in light of this, I think that "tempted" is the wrong word choice. Maybe you could start with a sentence more concrete. You could even just cut out the first sentence all together, and alter the first couple of words to be more clear about what you're talking about so that maybe it starts like "I was in love with each and every place we lived mostly because of the rich history (and then I would rearrange this)-->presented by each and the diverse peoples who lived there.<--(I did this because "natives" sometimes can have an odd connotation depending on your reader.)
- Things in Blue = commentary/reasoning
- Things in red = things I changed
