<p>Hi there,</p>
<p>I am looking for advice on ways to improve my common app essay responding to the prompt "Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story." This is my first draft, and i'm not too sure about it. I suppose i like it, but it doesn't exactly captivate one's attention the way that I would like, and i feel that i may need a more profound conclusion, i just don't know how to say it without sounding cliche. Thanks!</p>
<p>“DAD, WILL YOU PLEASE COME HERE?” I yelled from the upstairs bathroom. I heard my father get up from the couch lethargically and could only assume that he was annoyed by the interruption. He walked in on me lying on the bathroom floor vomiting into the toilet. My head caked in blood, my back and elbows covered in cuts and bruises. Shocked, he asked what had happened. I look at him confused and scared, “I thought that I just had a headache.” </p>
<p>It was a beautiful spring afternoon on March 30. My mother and I went for a walk, one of our favorite things to do together. My mom, powerwalking with my dog Skip, and me, riding along side the two of them on my long board. I decided to go ahead without them, as I wanted to get home and finish up my homework before the weekend came to an end. As I rolled up to the top of the hill that leads to my house, I wondered how exhilarating it would feel to go faster then I had ever gone before, to feel the sting of the air whipping against my skin. Pedaling furiously until I couldn’t any longer, I was on my way. Midway down the hill I began to feel my board wobble uncontrollably, and panic started to set in. Thoughts of all of my previous wipeouts consumed my focus and attention, and the next thing I knew my board was sliding from beneath my feet. I had hit a patch of gravel. I don’t remember waking up, or getting home. I had been knocked unconscious and sustained a traumatic brain injury. In my confused state I was under the impression that I only had a headache, and decided to try and sleep it off. After what seemed like only a few minutes I found myself in the bathroom calling for my fathers help.</p>
<p>One week later I was transferred out of the ICU and I walked again for the first time. A month of intensive rehab later, and I was back in school and not sure if I would be able to excel in my classes as well as I had prior to the accident. I found one day that I could no longer smell, and later learned that I will never be able to again. My life had changed in more ways than one and I was angry and upset that this had happened to me, and scared for what was to come in the future. Once summer came around and the stress of finals and AP Tests were over with, I decided to make a fresh start. From that point forward I started to see a trend, I was reinventing who I was little by little. This horrible accident that kept me out of school for over a month and made me question my own intelligence, central to my identity, turned out to have a silver lining to it.</p>
<p>Since then, I have gained a new outlook on life. This accident has helped me become the person that I am today because I have realized that life is too short to not do what you love and be the person that you’ve always wanted to be. A few things that I have been inspired to do are to learn to play Bass and join a band with my friends, improve my golf game, and make new friends. I used to think that these things didn’t really matter, but I have since realized that I need to make time for myself and do things that make me happy. After all, I don’t know how much time I have left. Everyday I work towards being a better person. I work to be kind to others, makes the most of whatever situation I am presented with, be a hard worker, and be fun to be around. I strive to remember what I have learned from this experience, and continue to exhibit these new characteristics that I have further developed recently.</p>