<p>I had to explain my gpa going down a bit in my personal statement thus:</p>
<p>Perhaps my most meaningful personal experience is no experience but more of a drawn out situation in my life. Up until the end of my senior year in high school my life and the lives of my parents were all about me. I lived in a perfect bubble in which the world was my oyster and other similar dreadful cliches. But, the universe, sensing I was in too euphoric of a fantasy land sent me a secular wake-up call in the form of my grandfather beginning a downward spiral of health. I declined the offer of acceptance from the University I had wanted to attend since the sixth grade in the hopes that within a year everything would be perfect again, and I could move on with my life, but only after I cared for my grandfather, because after all he would have done the same for me as our cultural expectations dictate.</p>
<p>As it turned out things weren't as simple in life as I had anticipated and so I spent the next three years caring for my grandfather. Within a year the man who had showered me with butterfly kisses and had taught me how to shoot my first sling shot at my dads rear end when I was a young un' had turned into nothing more but a faint hollow reflection of what he had once been. The grip that had usually been so strong was weak and shaky in my hands, and the glorious thick silver hair wasted away with the rest of him as the years passed by. I gladly took off days and even whole semesters of school to sit by his bedside and read Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights to him, cherishing every time he offered his sardonic comments on the love lives of my literary heroes. I wish I could say that within those moments I would have given everything I could to trade places with him, to save him, but that would be a lie. Listening to the pain he experienced throughout the night only made me fear death more, and as I forced myself to think of better days, the idea of my mortality and time on this planet was only sharpened. </p>
<p>He always asked me how school was going and I lied and made him believe that I was a star student, covered up the fact that I withdrew from so many classes because it hurt me so much to come home and find him choking on his own fluids while my mother wasted away in a fit of helplessness because like me she could do nothing to help him. In his eyes I was at the top of the Dean's List, and I was going to do great things, because I had all the opportunities he hadn't. I can't express how with every fiber in my being I wanted to be what he saw, but I never found the strength or desire to be as much.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago I woke up in the morning and found him half way between the doorway to the bathroom we shared. He had apparently gotten dizzy during the night, fallen and broken his nose. The doctors said he had some sort of heart attack but the thought of him choking to death on his blood never leaves my mind. And even as I have that horrible picture in my mind a part of me can't help but feel relief at the fact that he's gone. These past years with my Pop Pop taught me that sometimes death is not the worst outcome, and that life doesn't have to be about me always for me to be happy. Even though he was so sick I got to spend those last days with him and I will cherish them forever. It's with his image in my mind that I strive and dare to hope to be accepted once more into an institution of merit and make those lies that I told him once into realities.</p>