<p>I've been struggling with my UC essays a lot... I know it's super late to be asking this, but... ugh.</p>
<p>Anyway, I've heard from various sources that it's essential that low-income students, especially those not from a low-income area, make a case for themselves in their essays. So, I'm definitely going to do that in one way or another. But I've been having trouble figuring out how to write an engaging essay rather than just dryly describing the economic disparities that have existed between my peers and me throughout high school.</p>
<p>But then I realized.... I was evicted from my house at the end of freshman year, and I remember some serious details from that experience. One day I came home from school and my mom said, "Pack up your stuff. We have to leave." She meant, THAT DAY. We ended up getting like a week to do it, but it was still a nightmare. We had to throw away and sell most of our possessions. We had to get a dumpster to throw it all out. We didn't know where we were going to go. My father asked a neighbor to store our grand piano in their garage for us, which was ridiculous, and I remember feeling so ashamed about that. My parents eventually did find a friend who would store the piano for us... I remember sitting in my brother's room one evening on the only piece of furniture left in it - this green couch from the 80s - when this man appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. I thought he was probably someone who came to buy a piece of furniture, so I smiled and said something nice. Turns out he was the landlord. </p>
<p>Then I had to live at my grandmother's house the next town over (not too far from my school) for the next 7 months (until a few months into sophomore year) with the rest of my family. I literally lived out of a suitcase for 7 months, and I had absolutely no privacy because my mother and father slept on an air mattress outside the room where I slept, so they stored all of their things in that room and would come in without knocking. It was a nightmare. That was when I stopped talking to my father - he had made a lot of bad, selfish decisions, and he was always a jerk. I think he has narcissistic personality disorder. My grandmother (with financial problems of her own, mind) hates my father, and there was so much yelling and tension. Bleh. We only had a car at that time (had been renting one before) because one of my aunts bought us a Chevy... My brother had this 1989 (yeah) Peugeot, but while we were living there someone smashed the windows?? And it began to break down, so he had to sell it.</p>
<p>And it was really surreal, because I go to school in an extremely affluent suburb where only 5% of students qualify for Free Lunch, and most of them have virtually no resource limitations at all. So while my classmates at school talked about going to the local NBA game or going to Paris over winter break, I was worried about having a place to live and enough money to buy a new set of clothes.... and I'm still wearing most of the same clothes that I wore sophomore year....</p>
<p>So, so far all of this negative, right? I know, I know. I really didn't handle the situation very well at all... BUT, there were some things I did. For instance, that summer at my grandma's I taught myself the baritone horn for band. My freshman year I didn't have a very good experience in band, so I wanted to try something new sophomore year. So, yeah, I would practice in "my" room, and I would go over to the house of my friend who was also learning baritone. I sort of focused on that as a diversion and something to work hard on. I think it's a really good idea to mention this, because I was in band for 3 years and quit before senior year. I didn't hold any leadership positions, and I got a B in "zero period" the very last term that I was in it (not a-g, thank goodness)... And I'm not planning to go into music at all (I want to do something journalistic)... So it looks really bad on my transcript, I think. I guess this would be a way to shed some positive light on it. Other things about my experience: I learned a bit about reality. What it was like to not have money for any frivolous things - to worry about the necessities. I learned to get by... I also spent a lot of time on tumblr during that time... but I wasn't doing any dumb stuff. I looked through nature photographs, fine art, poetry, inspirational or interesting quotes, etc... I learned a lot about the world. The internet has always been my avenue for educating myself about culture, world happenings, etc., which is important for me, since I want to be a journalist or something. I want to say how my experience kind of "cracked the world open" for me and made me more aware, because awareness (of culture, history, world events, etc.) is a big thing for me.</p>
<p>I guess the problem with the topics that I've outlined may be that happened several years ago... but my financial problems have continued throughout high school. It wasn't until my parents sold my late grandmother's grand piano (the one I mentioned earlier) for 10k (even though it was worth much more than that... I was pretty ****ed, considering that I felt some ownership of the piano), and my father got a commission job and made a sale, that we moved out (into a smaaall house). By that time, my brother had gone to college, so it was just me and my neurotic parents, who hated each other.... Things were somewhat stable for awhile... my brother, home from his first year of college, slept on the couch all summer. But then my father left his commission job and refused to look for a job (not good enough for him, he thinks)... He started running for SECRETARY OF STATE, and in Sept. of my junior year he left my mom and me for another woman. We had noooo money. He even tried to sell the car that his sister had bought for us (as in, all of us, but especially me) on craigslist, and my brother - a soph in college - bought it from him for 1200 to ensure that my mom and I would not lose our source of transportation. I didn't exactly handle all this WELL, but I was pretty composed, seeing as how I was just glad to see my father go, and I tried to comfort my mom and encourage her to get a job. </p>
<p>BUT THEN a few months later, my mom freakin' let my father, who'd been turned out by the woman and had no place to live, and was still unemployed, COME BACK. It's been a year, and I still haven't spoken a word to him, even though we live in the same house. Recently, I had to move from that house further away... though that's not really a hardship - I still live less than 20 min from school. But I have not had any discretionary funds, and that's been hard. It's hard to see that my mother doesn't have health insurance and is falling apart (she has several chronic health conditions). My brother and I don't have health insurance, either (and my parents have got a huge medical bill from my brother's hs football days)... And I got a job early this schoolyear to ensure that I would have some money in case my mom flaked out on funding my college apps and everything (bad decision, considering how I needed that time to write my college apps).</p>
<p>Anyway, I guess this all ties into my future dreams and aspirations to be some sort of journalist, maybe (I think I'm going to apply as a sociology major??), because it gave me a lot of perspective and increased my awareness of the impact of poverty on people's lives (considering that so many have it way worse of than I do)... I've watched a ton of documentaries on world issues the past three years, read independent world news, National Geographic, etc. The second semester of my junior year I finally joined the school paper, and this year I'm one of the editors... But I think I'm going to write about writing and newspaper in the second prompt.</p>
<p>Anyway, I know this is super long, sorry. And I've heard from several people that you should be careful not to treat the PS as a "therapy session"... So I know that I have to cut out some of the above things. But I do think there is some material in there that I can use, don't you?? So - my question - which parts do you think I should use?? Is this a good idea?</p>