[BWC] Transitions Draft #1

College Essay Prompt 2:
Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

Unfortunately, growing up while being assimilated into Western culture has often hindered my ability to connect or be inspired by my family members or relatives.  One of my biggest regrets as a child was not taking the initiative to learn my cultures' language.  Since a majority of my family members spoke Cantonese as a native language, there was an ever-present language barrier that prevented me from learning about my heritage from a wide diverse perspective.  I was more often teased than encouraged to study the language and steadily showed a lack of interest during family conversations.  Having cousins and relatives who have careers as accountants, lawyers, and engineers, I felt anomalous choosing to major in animation/music.  However through the convenience of technology and the Internet, I found inspiration and comfort meeting other people who shared similar interests with me.

I always loved drawing and preforming music since I was a child.  Often I would draw cartoons, portraits, and just about everything I saw. At the same time, I started playing the piano becoming infinitely fascinated by music and took advantage of every opportunity to play at my teacher's recitals. While producing both arts, I realized what I cherished most was seeing the enjoyment of both adults and my peers whenever I revealed my latest creation.  Their enjoyment and recognition had left deep impressions on me, in that both art forms could bring pleasure to all ages.  Although my mother recognized my passion and encouraged it, my father was skeptical and thought pursuing the arts was waste of time.

It was during high school that I started exploring outside my world through meeting other artists online.  It was an eye opener to see so many other people who were experiencing the same situations and struggles as I did.  Soon, I became increasingly optimistic about pursuing both arts.  Eventually it was through an online music hosting site, that I met two very close friends who continue to support and encourage each other's goals as artists.  Overall meeting these two people, have really changed my life and they both have helped improve not only my art, but as a person.  In comparison to who I was a couple years before, I had many insecurities as to whether I was going to continue studying music or art.  Having shared many experiences and collaborations with them over the summer, has helped me become less timid in expressing myself and more undaunted that being an artist is what I want to be.


-414 words

(If I continue this draft I will definately elaborate on the experiences.)