- Freshman year, I was lost, the step to a new school gave me the constant feeling that of entering an operating room, which gave me anxiety for my first year of high school. The first semester of Spanish wasn't good for me at all, I was in that constant state of subliminal fear, but during winter break I decided to change my struggle in Spanish, for the entirety of the break I took 4 lessons a day of Spanish online that wasn't associated with my school or the state, just general lessons, and in that time I recovered and was able to achieve an A in the second semester which I brought with me getting an A in Spanish 2 showing my improvement .I recovered from this operating room like fear in sophomore year, bringing up my grades in everything, I still struggled with Honors algebra 2 because the intermediate school I attended which taught algebra 1 did not prepare me for this class, I spent nights studying, I may have gotten a C but I learned exponential amounts of things that I never knew before as if I was learning algebra 1 and algebra 2 at the same time, sure I would want to have an A but that A means nothing if I never learned anything, and in this class I truly did, I respect my teacher for not letting up and making achieving an A so easy, it made me study harder for understanding, even though I never achieved an A, it taught me so much. Let's break away from this explanation of my beginning struggles. I was and am always observational of the world around me, maybe not in the matter of North Korean politics or literature, but biology, when I was seven I would go to my dad's house every weekend to dig up an ant colony and try to keep this colony in a contained jar and raise it. Sadly they all died, and for years this went on, and I never stopped until this day, the exception being they don't die now, I love observing organisms at work, I love seeing colonies of ants build giant architectural structures of their own scale, I love watching hundreds of ants emerge from holes within the ground. My love for the biological world doesn't stop there, when I turned 15 I requested a microscope in which I got samples of yogurt and pond water, being fairly well with HTML programming (a program language for creating websites) I made my own website, I would put pictures of slides under the microscope and tried to label each one with a guess to which species it is and why the structure of this species is different from another, my reasoning for a website was to seem like I'm educating myself and others, even though practically no one visited my website, it was a nice way to pass time with the thing I love.
The shift from your despair over your Spanish grade to your fascination with the natural world and learning is pretty clunky (also the narrative about the grade problems is just not that interesting and can be reduced to a sentence or two, or just much shorter sentences), but I think the transition could be made a lot more interesting and connected with editing.
So you’ll read it’s not a good idea to post your essay, but rather use PM to a small group of people who might help. Your essay appears authentic to me, and your voice comes through but it needs polish. Look for some books on how to write the college essay at your library or on line to get some great tips. Read some great essays in these books to get a sense of how to get your message across in a spellbinding way. Good Luck! This is the right time to work on these. You’re ahead of the game.
^^
It sounded like your thoughts were all over the place. Nice general idea, but all over the place. Don’t try to fit everything in one essay. Focus on one or two aspects and make your voice stronger.
Also, transitioning and some punctuation problems.
As said above, posting your essay here will make it show up in a Plagiarism scan. PM it to people you can trust intead. There are some forums where people offer to read essays and provide feedback.
Good luck!
There’s a nice idea in there, but it needs a lot of work. I would delete the first half. It reads more like a resume than an essay and is filled with negativity and excuses. Concentrate on your love of biology and create a story around the ant hill. Really bring to life and expand the ant hill story, making sure to show off what you learned/how you grew from this experience.
Read some essays that worked that are posted on college websites. I believe JHU and Conn College have some, or The NY Times recently published a few. You will see that successful essays create a story and do so with ‘showing’ vs 'telling. Right now your essay is mostly tell, tell, tell. It reads, I did this, I learned this, I am this. You need to revise it so it is more of a story and the lessons come from the narrative vs simply ‘telling’ the reader. For instance your use of the operating room metaphor is a nice idea. Not really working as you have written it, because it is not flushed out enough, but it’s kind of on the right track, but it is the kind of device that can conjure up an image in the readers mind, which is better than simply telling them what the image should be.
Good luck.
^^^ The whole focus on biology and fascination can be a very sharp tool if you use it right. Although, too much is covered on very specific things regarding school and interests. Try to convey your feelings in a more straightforward and flowing thought. This essay is not to make you look good or bad, so flaunt your talents. The essay is made to know who you are as a person, henceforth “personal” essay. Also, revise for simple grammatical errors.