<p>Hi! I am writing my college essay and my mom thinks my essay has no structure whatsoever and sucks, but I honestly don't think it's that bad. I am not listening to he advice also because she is a horrible writer herself and she's my mom, not my English teacher. Here is the essay question and my essay. Thanks a bunch! :] And yes I realize the ending isn't that great... Tips would be much appreciated. </p>
<p>Required Essay: Rutgers University is a vibrant community of people with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. How would you benefit from and contribute to such an environment? Consider variables such as your talents, travels, leadership activities, volunteer services, and cultural experiences. Only personal essays submitted via our website will be considered. You may enter a maximum of 3800 characters including spaces.</p>
<p>Being from a European family I was surrounded by a different lifestyle than all of my American friends. My parents told stories of their lives back home, and they always pointed out similarities and differences between their home towns and the American city we live in now. People were much closer to their neighbors; the cities were big but not as industrial as some that we have here like Detroit or New York, and people were much more knowledgeable about other cultures. That knowledge probably came from the fact that they could travel 6 hours through Europe and go through two countries. Its much harder to do that here in America. In Europe there are hundreds of castles and landmarks that are older than anything you can find in the United States, and there are traditions that Europeans still keep today that you cant see anywhere else. I love learning about and visiting all of these different places, and having family to visit in Poland and Belgium is wonderful.
My grandpa from Belgium is a farmer. Every time I went to visit him he would take me into his garden and teach me all his gardening techniques and words in French. Being integrated into the way my family lived was so much fun when I was a child. Everyone wanted to live on a farm where there are lots of different fruits and vegetables and even a few cows! Not everyone can experience this. It makes you think differently, it makes you think about the lives of other people and how different every life can be. In Belgium we had no air-conditioning, which someone from the United States wouldnt even think of living without. It was even a little strange for me the first time I visited during the summer. I never thought people lived any differently than I did. Once, when I went to Poland to visit family, we took a little trip and stayed with a family on a farm in the middle of nowhere. It was going to start raining in a couple of hours, so my mother and I decided helped the local farmers gather up their wheat before the rain started coming down. We grabbed our pitchforks and started piling the wheat. The husband from the family began to make a rope out of the wheat and he used this rope to tie the bunches of wheat together. I thought that was the coolest thing, how quickly he managed to pull that off. Not many people get to have the experience of living on a farm in a foreign country and helping out as much as I had the chance to.
Being part of a European family and visiting them, and the areas that surround them, gave me another perspective on how these people live and the customs they have. As an American, I am uncomfortable with the way Europeans greet each other by kissing each other on the cheek, but I am more then happy to run and give someone a hug. We see on television how people live in other parts of the world live but we never can really know if the media is just being biased. When you see how others really live you can use your own experiences and learn to be more open minded and to look more clearly into the lives of others. I always heard communist Poland jokes here, but Poland isnt really like that. True, Poland has its rural areas, but so does the United States. Poland also has very bustling and technology-friendly cities. I like to think that growing up with all these things made me more open and willing to learn about different cultures. I love hearing stories about how other people live, regardless of whether they are from the other side of the United States or from across the world. And I would definitely benefit from a diverse environment. I would find it boring if everyone was the same and came from the same place.</p>