UC Essay

Prompt 1

The world from which I come is a very lonely one, it was like wearing an invisibility cloak. Ever since I had the ability to think I was left to fend for myself. I had to; it was the only way to live. The only person who took care of me was my brother until he had to go to college, then it was just my dog left to keep me company. On my first day of sophomore year my father decided that it was more important to go to a divorce lawyer than pick up my cousin and me from school. This changed everything. That year, I had to struggle through dance, school, a horrible home life, death, and driving, it was like everything was happening at once and there was nothing I could do to make it better. Because of this, I am a changed person. Every day I fight for my rights and strive for my freedom-I was being watched from every angle and all I wanted was to leave and finally be free from my family. All this freedom was stripped away due to a divorce. What most people don’t understand in a divorce is that the child has no say, they have nothing to do with the divorce yet they have to suffer the consequences.
The remarkable thing is that marriage is made a fool of time and time again through divorce, cheating, abuse, and a serious lack of love yet homosexuality is said to do exactly this if it were made legal. I come from a heterosexual couple that had a planned child, on paper this sounds like an amazing family to be brought in to. Only on paper would it sounds good. This is because the people who read it would know nothing about this family other than a heterosexual couple who had a planned child. There are no reports of neglect or abuse. Just a heterosexual couple who decided to have a planned child, and that’s all it ever will be. If this is what a marriage is today, there should be no marriage at all.

My father raised me to think that homosexual marriage wasn’t wrong, it was just unnatural. Because of this upbringing I believed that bisexuality, homosexuality, and pansexuality were all odd and I shouldn’t participate in that community. Partially spiting my dad and partly due to the fact most of my friends are gay, I have become an activist for gay rights.


Prompt 2

One accomplishment that is most dear to me is getting on pointe in ballet. This is a term used for ballerinas-pointe are the shoe that enables you to stand on your toes. In my first year of dance I was always jealous of the other girls already could do. They were so graceful, so beautiful, and so strong. So I bought a pair of pointe shoes. I practiced every night. My feet weren’t strong enough and it hurt so much, but I continued to practice because I felt so strong and capable when I was dancing. The pain was excruciating, I could literally feel my arches tear. I was born with feet that easily mold to my shoes, this means I have fallen arches most of the time, because of this it made my experience of getting on pointe that much harder. I had to work twice as hard just to do the simple things. Once I was on pointe I felt my toes scream, having all your weight placed on your big toes is the most foreign feeling I have ever experienced, but after some time passed my toes would either get used to the pressure or simply go numb, whatever it took to finish the dance. Some days I would have to bandage my calves and knees because the tearing of muscles and formation of stronger ones would make it nearly impossible to move, but I had to continue my days normally. When I finally brought my pointe shoes to class, my teacher just looked at me but she let me show her what I could do. She was extremely surprised because of how I could actually get straight on my toes. I still needed a lot of fine tuning and work, and I did. I always pushed myself harder than I could. Every night I would have to massage the knots of muscle out of my feet and legs. But it was still worth it.

I went over board that year with all the dance class I took, I took six classes and was in nine dances-I was supposed to be in more but I couldn’t remember some and preferred to dance well in fewer dances than have many dances and not be able to dance to my full potential. I took one class called Lyrical. This is the hardest dance class I have ever taken. One of my proudest accomplishments is sticking with that class until the end. No one supported my dancing and everyone told me just to quit, but I never did. I dealt with the physical pain and when I was strong enough I would dance as hard as I could. I was never as strong as the other girls but I didn’t stand out anymore. I could dance just like them, I stayed in sync and pushed through. At the end of that year I had earned the respect of everyone, I had become a dancer.