<p>This is for UC essay as well as a Common Application essay</p>
<p>Applying to:
UC Riverside
Boston U
Syracuse</p>
<p>and a couple others, but those are the main ones.</p>
<p>a little background information: i received under a 1.0 gpa my sophomore year but improved to 3.0 my junior year.</p>
<p>*i understand that its not safe posting it in public. i will probably edit it all out in a few days.</p>
<hr>
<pre><code> Upon entering high school, I expected it to be painless. My mother and father rose from poverty and living in a car while my brother and sister were known to be extremely diligent students; I always believed that my family was naturally intelligent and I would be no different. My family earned their wealth and it wasn’t earned from laziness, my mother always reminds me. In high school, my brother and sister were constantly studying and I always envisioned myself to be just like them.
My first year of high school surprised me. I did not receive the 4.0 I had expected. “Freshman year doesn’t matter anyway,” I convinced myself. I brushed it off and carelessly assured that sophomore year would be a turnaround.
Perhaps my “natural intelligence” hadn’t kicked in. Conflicts arose during the summer of my sophomore year through hostile sparks ignited between my parents and me. I cannot remember where the disagreements originated from, but arguments between my parents and me exploded to the point where that my home became a war zone. Intense, heated shouting matches became an everyday occurrence: screaming and shouting, shattered plates and cups, misunderstood Korean and English clashing. Eventually it came to a point where a neighbor had called the police from hearing the chaos. This led to my parents and me entering counseling to reconcile our differences. Throughout this flurry my motivations became unclear; my sophomore still remains a blur: color and sounds of computer gaming into the night and sleeping into the afternoon were commonplace. I became irritable and socially inept. I snapped at my friends who attempted to give me advice which I falsely interpreted as condescending criticism. In school I slept through lectures, experiencing embarrassing events as my teachers woke me admist my snickering peers.
The sophomore year dragged on and I was exhausted. High school became an unending chore and I abandoned the hope of living up to my siblings. I still remember the last day of school when I walked home on the hot summer day and remembering all my failures and what a waste the year had been. Whether my life would continue at a steady pace was on the rocks and I was at the point where I had to decide for myself to continue with my education.
I had failed English in my atrocious sophomore year, so I had to attend to summer school. At one point, we wrote an essay on the novel fittingly titled Things Fall Apart. I still recall waiting for the negative criticism while my teacher read my essay. I stood, tense and tight-lipped waiting for her disappointed statements. A minute passed until she finally gave her judgement. To my great surprise, she praised my essay and said I used “great examples.” I took the essay home and treated it like a great treasure. I read it over and over, thrilled that a teacher had given my very own work a positive feedback. From all my failures from my sophomore year, it startled me at the discovery that I contained an academic talent.
When I entered my junior year, I discovered my love for history and English, an unprecedented thought that would have disgusted me a year before. Instead of entering class and immediately sleeping or socializing, I opened up my mind: I became much more attentive in class and especially loved these two subjects because they reflected human behavior. I came to appreciate John Steinbeck’s eloquently written novels and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s love for his country. For both classes, I enthusiastically wrote essays, my newly discovered talent. I loved the thought of being able to finally have an outlet to convey my own thoughts and beliefs onto paper. I transferred my positive outlook to the other subjects and improved dramatically compared to my disastrous sophomore year. Not only did I improve academically, but I also delved into extracurriculars, creating my own club -- the North Korea Freedom Association.
Ultimately my high school career can be described as tumultuous but nonetheless beneficial in a broad view. I was strongly discouraged during my sophomore year with my abysmal results and nearly closed the option of college. I had to make sacrifices in order to focus on my education such as suspending my longtime passion for tennis. I also relied far too much on the na
</code></pre>