3 Common College Essay Mistakes To Avoid

3 Common College Essay Mistakes To Avoid My close friend Akshay recently started stressing about whether his parents were going to get divorced. With John’s advice, I started checking in on Akshay, spending more time with him, and coaching him before and after he talked to his parents. I started playing basketball, began working on a CubeSAT, learned to program, changed my diet, and lost all the weight I had gained. I started to make new friends with more people at my school and was surprised to find out that 90% of their parents were divorced. Because we faced similar issues, we were able to support one and other, share tactics, and give advice. One of my friends, John, gave me advice on how to help my mother emotionally by showing her love, something I hadn’t been able to do before. My friends gave me a family and a home, when my own family was overwhelmed and my home was gone. After 14 years of living in a region destroyed by violence, I was sent away to boarding school in a region known for peace, Switzerland. That year my father was found guilty and imprisoned for the charges related to his Army support contract. I felt as if I was Edgar in Shakespeare’s King Lear and this could not get worse, but yet it did. Stained with gray stones and marked with yellow lines, it separates the chicken from the opposite field. Now my friends in Switzerland come to me asking me for advice and help, and I feel as if I am a vital member of our community. The chicken knows it must escape; it has to get to the other side. The chicken--confused, betrayed, disturbed--slowly lifts its eyes from the now empty ground. For the first time, it looks past the silver fence of the cage and notices an unkempt sweep of colossal brown and green grasses opposite its impeccably crafted surroundings. Cautiously, it inches closer to the barrier, farther from the unbelievable perfection of the farm, and discovers a wide sea of black gravel. “All the food, the nice soft hay, the flawless red barn--maybe all of this isn’t worth giving up. She just wants to protect me from losing it all.” The chicken replays the incident again. A fissure in the chicken’s unawareness, a plan begins to hatch. I wanted back the family I had before the restaurant--the one that ate Luchi Mongsho together every Sunday night. Over the next two years, things were at times still hard, but gradually improved. Sophomore year, I started an engineering club and found that I had a talent for managing people and encouraging them to create an idea even if it failed. I also learned how to take feedback and become more resilient. Here, I could nerd-out about warp drives and the possibility of anti-matter without being ignored. I would give a weekly report on new technology and we would have hour-long conversations about the various uses a blacker material could have. I began spending more time in our garage, carefully constructing planes from sheets of foam. I found purpose balancing the fuselage or leveling the ailerons to precisely 90 degrees. I loved cutting new parts and assembling them perfectly. But at times I still had to emotionally support my mom to avoid sudden India trips, or put my siblings to bed if my parents weren’t home at night. Over time, I found it difficult being my family’s glue. My parents decided to start anew, took some time apart, then got back together. My mom started to pick me up from activities on time and my dad and I bonded more, watching Warriors and 49ers games. Not long ago, I would have fallen apart at the presence of any uncertainty. As I further accept and advance new life skills, the more I realize how much remains uncertain in the world. After all, it is quite possible my future job doesn’t exist yet, and that’s okay. Saudi Arabia in the 2000s wasn’t the most ideal place to grow up. I was always scared of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. My school was part of the US Consulate in Dhahran, and when I was in the 8th grade it was threatened by ISIS. Violence has always surrounded me and haunted me. In high school, I slowly began to forge a community of creators with my peers. In a world where we know very little about the nature of “Truth,” it’s very easyâ€"and temptingâ€"to construct stories around truth claims that unfairly legitimize or delegitimize the games we play. I analyze why I think this essay works in The Complete Guide, Session 6. Frozen in disbelief, the chicken tries to make sense of her harsh words.