<p>Prompt is "what is your intended major and how you got interested in it and what experience you have in this field."</p>
<p>I am shooting for UCLA. Do I have any chances with this statement?
Please critique this essay. thanks :)</p>
<p>"Will I really die, if I dont go outside?" This was an overwhelming question on my mind for about five months. I didnt want to go outside because first, I was very weak and secondly, the mosquitoes would suck my idiosyncratic blood. My mother would constantly lure her only child, a six year, yellow skinned oompa-loompa to play outside with friends to get some fresh air. I didnt want to face my friends as not only my face, but my whole body was yellow. The fear of rejection and death encouraged me to ask the doctor personally, what exactly was wrong with my body? The six years old me, in a small village in India in 1990s, couldnt get many resources about Icterus, except an in-depth pamphlet. As I didnt know how to read Hindi yet, my grandmother would read it to me while I actively tried to understand my disease. Those ten or so readings, which I forced my family to give, until the pamphlet suddenly "disappeared," were my first biology lectures. Though, I understood the underlying cause of jaundice, even having made a body diagram explaining the disease to my friends, there remained millions of questions in my brain as to what are RBC; what and how do they work, and most importantly, how does medicine c¬¬ure this disease. That defined the turning point in my life; I found my passion-- research. After taking the biology class in fifth grade, I realized that instead of just memorizing, the type of questions I had needed the basic understanding of living bodies. Around the age of thirteen, the stress of puberty, poverty and immigration to the U.S. struck me at once. Knowing limited English, I would go search for jobs for my parents from store to store after coming from a very peer-pressured day at school, and would read about my pimples whenever I got the chance. In ninth grade biology class, I was introduced to biochemistry and cell biology. I soon started getting answers to my years old questions, but more questions were forming as I read my first actual biology book. While taking AP Biology in high school, I realized that my true passion is biochemistry and cell biology. I want to major in it and become a researcher and find answers to satisfy myself and the world. The main question on my mind right now is; how biological molecules give rise to the processes that occur within living cells, and how do cells work together to make an organism?
Throughout my high school, I was an officer of a Key club, working under the guidance of my biology teacher provided me extra chance to ask questions and look at cell models. At De Anza, I am a proud founding member of the Biology Club. There I have come across people with similar interests, and we can go on talking about a certain biology topic for hours. I learned that peer discussion is very important in biology, especially in the field of research because one constantly needs to be aware of new discoveries. I volunteer for De Anzas biology lab room where my duties range from organizing the models and chemicals to setting up lab materials for various classes of biology. I have the privilege of using the thirty thousand dollar automatic agar plate maker. The advanced lab techniques I learned while volunteering are surely going to be very helpful in my career. As an individual project, I am in the process of testing how much and what strains of bacteria does a typical De Anza student gets into contact with on a typical day. I am also in the initial process of working with a biology professor to make an instructional video about "Gel Electrophoresis" for his classes. These two projects are giving me the feel for what I am getting into. And I love every aspect of it. Volunteering at biggest hospital in the city, where patients with burns, cancer, prosthetic organs come, is a very good opportunity for me to learn about different areas of biology and ask questions from all my horizons and write it down in the book of questions, if the answer needs to be found yet. The end goal of my career as a biology researcher is to serve living beings with knowledge, which I have struggled to get since childhood.</p>