<p>Can anyone give me feedback on my Common app essay</p>
<p>Question: Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application wont be complete without. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.</p>
<p>Self-Deception
As a kid, I had this long strange feeling that something wasn’t right about me. I discovered that I’ve been lying to myself about who I really am. The way I lied was using wrong abilities to do things. My real abilities are, excellent understanding, analyzing and communication skills, but I don’t know any potential reasons why I didn’t use my real skills in the first place. One benefit though is to protect my feelings or reactions from opportunities that I’m afraid of. In fact, the opportunities that I am afraid of are what I’m truly capable of.
During my years of elementary school, I was sent to special education classes because I, my mother, and my teachers thought I had a learning problem with comprehension. Whenever I read or listen I just lack out of it because it would be a word or phrase that I couldn’t understand. My body was trying to tell me what the problem was but I didn’t listen because I was already used to the wrong abilities I had, like they were actually true. Not because I didn’t want to use my real skills but, I just wasn’t aware. I generally had fear of public because I worry about what other people think of me from daily activities, like talking, playing sports, even dancing. So basically, self-deception was like my comfort zone, but I would regret the true things that get in the way. As my true self, I would be good in any of these activities.
I don’t know any potential reasons of how I started deceiving myself, but here is some evidence that would’ve been true: I and my family used to live in a public housing neighborhood in Chicago called Cabrini-Green. Filled with: poverty, gangs, drugs, violence, including rape. Though the buildings are now torn down, the high extent of the aspects of the neighborhood may have influenced everyone locally in the area to not know who they are and what they’re capable of, especially children.
Since high school, I thought that I still had a problem of comprehension because it was getting a little worse when I received more assignments. From that, I’d finally got my body’s attention to tell me what the problem was. My body was trying to tell me I’ve been deceiving myself about who I really am, for a long while. So it turned out that I didn’t have any problems or disabilities and I still don’t. I actually do have excellent comprehension and analyzing skills, it was just hidden, while the deception took over. As soon as I was self-aware, I started to become honest with myself, but it’s very very difficult and challenging, since I’ve been lying for several years, I’m still working on it now. Nevertheless, I do see some excellent improvement by becoming independent at school and getting along with others. Hopefully, self-deception will be close to elimination by the time I attend college. So it’s not too late to change and I’m not giving up.
If I never had deceived myself, I wouldn’t be receiving special education services; I would’ve been at regular education classes, and would’ve made a lot of friends. A lot of opportunities would’ve been open for me. I know I know not everyone is good at everything, it’s just natural. Nevertheless, I have never blamed myself for lying and I won’t. When I attend college, I will major in psychology to research any factors of self-deception. That’s the main purpose of attending college, finding and showing who you really are and I will prove that by showing my true great skills through academics and getting involved by interacting with others. I also want to study abroad to learn about different cultures and I think that’s a great method to interact with people if one is shy. So I will play a perfect role at college. In addition, I will be the first one in the family to go to college. The overall lesson that I’ve learned from this great experience so far is the more honest you are to yourself, including others, the more opportunities will open for you. I’m better than how I was before. </p>
<p>Is it confusing?</p>
<p>It’s okay if it does because I’m already fixing it.</p>
<p>I feel like this is your first draft and usually students in their first draft get a lot of stuff off their chest, which is good because it then opens up for students to dig deeper into the more substantial stories. My opinion is that you should start over and first define your “identity”. Then go back and identify the personal experiences that led to this identity and tell these experiences from a positive angle.</p>
<p>Hope this helps. Best of luck!</p>
<p>confusing</p>
<p>Here’s my newer version, this one might make more sense. I am sorry about the confusion from my first draft. So can I get feed back from this?</p>
<p>As a kid, I had this long strange feeling that something wasn’t right about me. I discovered that I’ve been lying to myself about who I really and what I’m capable of. The way I lied was using skills that didn’t fit me, in and out of education. In other words, it felt like I was somebody else other than my true self. But I don’t know any potential reasons why I didn’t use my real skills, at first.</p>
<pre><code>During my years of elementary school, I was sent from regular to special education classes because I, my mother, and teachers thought I had a learning problem with comprehension. Whenever I read or listen to something, I lack out of it because it would be a word or a phrase I couldn’t understand. Nonetheless, I’ve been outstanding, I just think I didn’t deserve to receive any kind of special need. Education wasn’t the only place I’d lied to myself, I had wrong skills to interact with others. My benifit about lying to myself, was to escape from talking or get involved because I worry about what others think of me. In particular, I worry if they either laugh or ignore me. But I would regret the fact to get interact or involved.
During my years of high school, it was getting a little worse when I started getting more assignments when I still thought I had a learning problem with comprehension. Therefore, I was finally aware of the feeling. It turns out that I didn’t have a learning problem or a disability and I still don’t. As soon as I was self-aware, I felt a little shocked and honestly, comfortable. That meant the feeling was gone. My body was trying to tell me what the problem was for years, but I was already used to using the skills that weren’t right for me. My true skills are excellent understanding, analyzing, and communication skills. After my self-awareness, I started using those skills, but I had to get through this difficult transition of changing to my true self. For example, now that I have good comprehension and analyzing skills, but it was hard to revealed them. An example within an example, whenever I read or listen, I understand what is going on, but can’t get it out in words because I wouldnt know any words to explain something. But now, that’s going excellent so far. Meanwhile, I also started to interact with others by joining extracurricular activities, but I still do be shy a little but it’s going good so far.
I took the ACT twice, my scores from both of the tests were below average. This is one of my biggest effect for lying to myself about who I really because if I never did, I would’ve got a higher score; I would’ve took more challenging courses than the amount I take now; and I would have been involved in opportunities and activities, I probably would be school president, by now; I wasted a lot of time. I know all this because I’m understanding more about myself since I was first aware of it. Now, I’m currently making it up by joining extracurricular activities this senior year and I’m lucky because this is my final year of school. As a senior going off to college, self-deception has been the greatest battle that I’m still going through, but senior year is the perfect time to finish it. When I attend college, I am going to be independent without no special services at all because I wont no longer need them. Since I realized that I’d lied to myself, I feel like I don’t deserve to receive special needs or being shy because I’m better than that. In college, I’m going to major in psychology to research factors of lying to oneself, and that’s the main point of going to college, finding and showing you you really are. As well as, getting involved by meeting new people. So Overall, I will play an ideal and successful role when I attend. The overall lesson I’ve learned so far is to find who you are and don’t stop till you find it because the more you know what you’re capable of, more opportunities will be open up for you. So it’s not too late to change and I’m not giving up.
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<p>The actual question is experiancing failure and what you learned from it?</p>