Writing my college statement was memorable because I remember it not only being difficult to choose a prompt for my essay but also, I put so much effort into every word and I used a lot of the writing techniques we learned in that ELA class in 12th grade. Techniques like proper punctuation, cutting out unnecessary parts and better wording, which are evident in my texts and writing. It is significant since it helped me become more proficient in words and be able to increase the vocabulary to hit the word count. I feel these things are valuable and meaningful because I poured my soul into that personal statement for college. Especially since it has basically everything that made me who I am, and I wanted it to or else was it really a personal statement? 

For the better, in 2021-2022 my 12th grade teacher named Liz taught me much of what I use in my writing and vocabulary in all 3 of my literacy situations in the literacy worksheet. I had to develop what I learned to pass the class, but I also liked how I grew and understood myself and others more because of it. I read the essay again last year and showed it to my friends and Jessica who is my current girlfriend, and they were not only impressed but my girlfriend said that she feels I write like her. I agree since we are not too different from each other in our thoughts and actions. My statement still holds up to who I am today as well, in terms of accuracy and being enjoyable to read and understand, which further proves how much it shaped my literacies because nothing else has ever since. I learned to express who I am from writing that essay, even though it took a couple of months, I can better describe my personality, interests, and appropriate writing. 

The prompt for my personal statement was, “What experiences, people, realizations make you?”. I chose this one since I could get the most words out of this prompt idea, and I had the fun and creative freedom out of it. One of my favorite parts of my statement was when I got away with quoting Kung Fu Panda. Hence, my fun and creative freedom. “… “The past is history; the future is a mystery. But now is a gift, that is why it is called the present.” …To me this coincidence in the English language is a reminder to appreciate the gift of life I that I have been given.“ It is just gold, isn’t it? And for my friends, they liked the part of my statement that said, “One arbitrary day in eighth grade I was called to the main office, and I met my biological father for the first time since I was four. To my surprise, I did not recognize him since I thought I would never see him again. I was shocked in a way that I had never felt before when I finally did recognize him… I did not know what to say or how to react when he greeted me. I just repeatedly said, “oh my god it’s you” in my head. He was there to let me know he finally got the right to legally see me and tell me he never forgot about me. I was relieved that he never really disappeared, and I have been seeing him occasionally ever since that day.” This is a story that changed how I view life, parenthood and having a spouse since my mom did not let my father see me for a longer and complicated story but made him look bad when he did nothing but be the best father I could ask for, for my whole life. One of the reasons he had to leave was my parents were young, dumb, and not ready to have kids. So, learning from that I will not have kids for at least another 8 years. 

I got advantages because I can describe my experiences more organized and detailed, making me sound smarter and less confusing. In high school I got better at reading and understanding books because, we read a couple particularly not easy to understand books like Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Great Gatsby, after Liz would explain what certain parts mean and the significance of important parts of the book. I am also able to teach others how to do it too after I think of how to make it simpler. But the disadvantages are even though I am clearer, I could lose people’s interest by over-talking and overthinking or giving the wrong idea based on the length of what I said or wrote. Even though I just want to explain things because I want people to know the truth, especially about me and I like helping people, including teaching them a few things. It connects to family because I could over explain things when trying to convince them, so when they think of whether it is true or not, they often assume the latter.