<p>My sophmore year of high school, I moved across the country from the west coast to the east coast. I thought the experience would be fun, as I had moved before, and enjoyed adapting to the new environment, but I was wrong. It wasn't that I didn't like the people or the town or anything. It was that my mom did not like the town. She became extremely depressed because she had left her friends, family, and the familiarity of the west coast. For all of my sophmore year and much of my junior year she would rarely talk, go out, or do anything she had done before in the west coast. It was a really difiicult experience for me, almost worse than being depressed myself, because I felt helpless and lost for my mom.</p>
<p>What I want to talk about in my essay is how I overcame feeling helpless and lost by taking a more active role in life by working hard, taking more responsibility, and becoming more of an individual. I took on a lot of projects around our home to make it more of "our" house (re-doing flooring, rebuilding bathrooms, painting, etc). I began to think of people and how they felt around me (I reached out to people who seemed lonely or sad at school and outside of school). I began to play music (which has become a large part of my life), and I began to take pride in my ethnicity (learning to read, write, and speak the language, and studying its history). </p>
<p>I also worked hard in school and am proud of the accomplishments I have had there (but this is shown in my resume)</p>
<p>I was thinking I could spend a paragraph talking about each of those with anectdotes, with the intro setting up the background for all of them (the move and my moms depression).</p>
<p>Do you think that this would be a good topic? I'm afraid colleges may not like talking about so many different things in one essay, and above that, that they wouldn't like my mom's depression being the background for it all. </p>
<p>Your topic sounds good to me! I’m no expert, but I think it shows your personal development and maturity in a unique way; not many kids have parents with depression and work so actively to help them. I’d say it’s reasonable to be concerned about all the little topics within the essay. It may get too long, to be honest. Try to focus on the details that are the most relevant and show colleges what you’re really like. For example, unless you want to pursue becoming a contractor or something, maybe don’t spend too much time on the house fixing/altering. It’s worth mentioning but probably better to spend more time on being kind to others and getting in touch with your culture. Be careful about talking too much about the music thing because I think that’s becoming a pretty common topic for college essays- don’t let me deter you from expressing a passion or whatever but you probably don’t want to become one of the many, many music-themed admissions officers will surely read. Best of luck!!</p>
<p>I feel like I post the same thing on every thread like this, but: it’s all in the writing.</p>
<p>Things you want to watch out for:
[ul]
[<em>] Don’t make it a sob story.
[</em>] Don’t make it more about your mom than yourself.
[li] Make sure that you’re telling a story only you can tell.[/li][/ul]</p>
<p>Lots of kids have had to take on greater responsibilities at home because of a parent’s illness (mental or physical). What makes you different? Why are you better/why did you learn more than those other kids? You don’t have to give me answers to these questions, obviously, but you should make sure that you make your answers to these clear in your essay. Happy writing!</p>
<p>I actually like the idea of building your story around making your home “our house”. Not many kids would take it upon themselves to renovate their home. Perhaps the story begins that you started these renovations to help your Mom feel better, but through the work you found yourself. Then take us through that story of person growth - told through the lens of the home renovation. Basically you renovated yourself.</p>