College Admissions Essay: Overcoming Adversity In My Life

Throughout history, mankind has always been faced with adversity and we have always prevailed through our problems stronger than we were before the adversity. From civil wars to personal problems, hardships have always shaped individuals by helping them grow. Difficult situations help people grow to be smarter, stronger and better because they are able to learn from the situation and as a result, next time they face adversity, they can react better. Adversities are necessary to help us discover who we are because we can learn from our mistakes and grow from them.

We all have to face adversity each and every day of our lives, but we all have different ways of facing it. Some people try to hide in the depths of the shadows and others face the problems of life head on. As Thomas S. Monson said, “Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.” Monson is a religious leader and author that has inspired people every single day. His quote has helped me realize that my physical challenge that I had up until second grade was only the beginning of the challenges that I would face later on in life and that if I choose to be weak, life would destroy me unless I decided to be strong and fight through out life. This is the story of how I had to face adversity and overcame it.

Overcoming adversity says a lot about a person. The adversity in life I have had to personally overcome is a birth defect. I was born with a cleft lip which has caused me to have five procedures from the ages of three months to sixteen years old. Not a day goes by where I’m not reminded of the challenges I’ve had to overcome, because every time there is a mirror, I’m reminded by a scar upon my face.

From my adversity and hardship I unveiled who I am and what I am capable of. I ventured outside my comfort zone; challenging myself to start new conversations everyday and foraging friendships faster than a tempest. I also started to express my curiosity and discovered the metamorphosing world in which I live by throwing myself into the wilderness with Outdoor Ed. Most importantly, I embraced others and helped them be happy, to stop them from feeling alienated like I did. l saw that I held the power and I hoped that I could help others see the same.

As a human we are always faced with adversities and we must all ways overcome them, some adversities may be small things like not wanting to get out of bed in the morning but you do it anyway , or getting dressed these are things that just happen with life and we learn to face them and they shape and teach us to be who we are.

My adversities are the catalysts to the enhancement of my virtues in life. I believe that my life is constricted with great purpose. A purpose that has caused the hardships I have endured to be the core of my considerably various achievements, opened a door for me to support others and gave me the hope of an influential and resourceful future.

While my application may seem as if my life is frolicsome without any worries, I continue to overcome obstacles daily. I may appear to possess great qualities such as a competitive grade point average, a high class rank, and many characteristics others strive to acquire. However, I have experienced obstacles I fell that no child should have to ever experience in their lifetime. As a six year old, my parents divorced, leaving me confused and upset. Granted, most children do not understand when their parents go their separate ways, but I did because I witnessed the fights, the bickering, and more.

Adversity has been my greatest teacher. This personal struggle has made me realize that only I am in control of my happiness and I am the only one who can truly dictate in which direction my life goes. I feel stronger and more confident than ever to handle life’s challenges, define my own successes, and substantially contribute to my community and the world around

I would not be the person I am today if I did not have to experience hardships in my life. Fighting adversity and taking steps in order to make my weaknesses into strengths, has shown me that anything is possible. I however, was not always so confident in my ability to fight the difficulties that plagued my life. My child hood was not what one would consider idea. My father was not around, and my mother was not capable of supporting us when I was younger. I lived in an apartment with other family members, and from an early age I experienced abuse. As I grew older I began to let my past control me and take over my life. In high school I began to self-harm and drink. I also began to involve myself in risky behavior. I skipped school and did not try because I felt it was pointless, because I had no hope.

I must have become intoxicated with my first flirtations with independence and rebellion. Without fail, the mere taste of a formidable challenge will relentlessly enchant me, as if it were a novel concept.

Adversities are difficulties or misfortunes many have had to face like life-threatening illness, homelessness, and or alcohol abuse. I have been fortunate enough to not have had to encounter such challenges in my life but I have had coped with trying situates in my last couple of years in high school. I have always been the type of person that always wants to please everyone and anyone. I learned in high school that that was not always possible. I would go through extreme measures for people to like and accept me and people even judged that. It wasn’t until the middle of my junior year of high school that i realize not everyone was going to accept you because everyone had their own opinion and instead of trying to change what they thought

In life there are challenges that you'll go through. Some of these challenges are beneficial, while the others can be devastated. When people go through these challenges this is called adversity. In case you don’t know, adversity is an unfavorable fortune or fate. Even if you haven't gone through it yet, everybody goes through it in life. It’s a part of life that you can’t escape. When I was 13 years old I got the news that I lost my great grandfather to Alzheimer's disease. When I found out I was devastated. Around this time I was struggling in school, my grades were going down, I had a miserable feeling, and I was feeling sorry for myself. I was putting up a front as if everything was good, but in reality I was sad. I was angry at the same

Challenges occur in everyone’s life, but how one deals with said challenges is what determines how well that life is lived. My goal, since I was a child, was to go to college for Biomedical Engineering. The reason was that both my parents were heavily involved in the medical field and while I was in school engineering majors always piqued my interest, so my mission was to combine the two. However, as I got older my parents became more financially unstable, so working became a priority for me to support them. I had already been working when I became sixteen years old, but I never had to worry about picking up more hours until I had to help my family pay off bills.

Corruption, unfortunate favors, and demoralization have led me to believe how impoverished and isolated we are to grasp the situations and unable to adapt to adversity. A champion is a superior leader, acting on an unconditional affection; furthermore, guiding and alternating the view of ignorance to improve, change, and provide back to the community, whether it is in schools, hospitals, or overall society. With a transparent importance, Winston Churchill once stated: "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give". To clarify, each constructive experiences that has strengthened us internally and externally is what we obtain, and using that mentality awards us a chance to provide and bestow what we appreciate.

Challenging situations are mere hurdles in my path that I will always remember and learn from. I didn’t always have such a positive outlook on the issue until the time I faced a problem that may affect my life forever. My freshman year in high school will be one that I will never forget because I had all the opportunities in front of me, but I couldn’t find the ability to seek them out and for that reason, it’s something that I regret. Coming into freshman year I had plenty of influential people in my life tell me the importance of the first year, however, I elected to take their word lightly and ended up receiving the worst grades of my life. This decision that I chose to make has haunted me ever since and I have strived to make every possible