College Essay Revised and Reviosion choices attached

Tainara Candido
AP English
Immigration
The plane ride to America lasted several hours and seemed endless, my childish excitement exceeding my patience at the time. I repeatedly looked out the window to observe the clouds and fantasized of my new life in America. I worried about making new friends in a country that I didn’t know and a language I didn’t speak. I dreamed of attending school and learning English, a foreign language spoken by extroardinary people living in an enchanted land. Ever since my father’s arrival in America three years before mine, I envisioned meeting him in America and impressing him with my knowledge of the English language. I tried teaching myself English and memorized an abundance of words and numbers in English . Granted, I did not have a firm enough grasp of the Portuguese language at the time so teaching myself english was a difficult task, but in my six year old mind I could. America was a place I imagined resembling an utopia, a perfect country. Living in Brazil, my father often called home to regale my mind with stories of kind and generous Americans and of my favorite story about everyone getting along with each other, even cats and dogs. In my childlish innocence, I believed all of this possible in America and more; the land of opportunities.
Upon our arrival to America, we were faced with the challenges of learning to adapt in a foreign country along with the struggle of the foreign language. To this day, my mother struggles with English and has me translate, speak, and write for her. Whenever someone calls home in English, the phone is handed to me where I must then write down any information for my mother. My mother attempted attending English classes but I was usually the one stuck completing her homework. I dreaded the afternoons in which she returned with homework since I knew I wasn’t going to be able to ride my bike that day. She’s leaned onto my English as a crutch and simply won’t stand up, which I no longer find as irritating as I did in the beginning. I learned English in a matter of months and by the third grade I spoke accentless. I read every book I earned or bought for I was afraid of feeling stupid in not knowing the language. I constantly thought of other teasing me and being left friendless if I didn’t speak the language. By the second grade, I read at a much higher level than my peers, one of my favorite books being Pride and Prejudice; granted the illustrated one with easier to read words, but I easily caught up to my English speaking friends and surpassed them. I took pride in my English and in my school work as well, working hard to be accepted. I obsessed over speaking correctly and overachieved by handing in extra work whenever possible. As a child, I understood that I had to work hard in this country to survive, so I strove to work as hard as my father worked, who worked fourteen hours a day to support his family; but academically.
America was and still is a place of opportunity, precisely the reason my father came to the United States and brought his family. He lost his job in Brazil, and as the unemployment rate escalated, he knew securing another job was nearly impossible; today I am aware that were I to have been raised in Brazil, I would be out of luck in finding employment, most especially as a woman. I’m in this country today to achieve my dreams of going into a career to help others and to give back to my community in the form of community service or even just introducing them to a new culture and lifestyle. I am here to achieve my dream of financial stability so that one day in the future I will never have to move to another country and work fourteen hours a day at a pizzeria simply to feed my family; or to struggle with the language and depend on my children for simple daily tasks as taking down a phone number. Today, I have two homes, one in Malden, Massachusetts, and another in Urussanga, Brazil. I know what it’s like to live two different cultures and to work hard to secure my future in this country. I’ve adapted, I’ve made this country my country and I will contribute to its well being and differences for the rest of my life.


College Essay REvision Choices:

Tainara Candido
Ap English
Portoflio
Revision Choice
I chose to revise a sample of personal work, my college essay. I chose to revise that essay simply because I felt that it was the one I had the most to work with, and also simply because I never revised it before and felt that it was too on the surface. When I first got back my college essay, the commentary for the changes to be made was that it had no focus, my teacher didn’t really know where I was going with it. After reading it once more myself, I realized that I didn’t even know where I had gone with it. I changed the essay to give it focus, to show the reader what I can contribute to a community with my background, the diversity and attitude I bring to a community. I also rewrote parts of the essay so that the struggle my family and I went through in adapting to this country was more apparent and gave my conclusion a stronger focus. I revised parts of the essay to show that I came to this country to be able to succeed financially and would never have to fight as hard as my parents fought. I also deleted unnecessary parts of the essay that I thought showed nothing of my personality or highlights of the journey to this country; irrelevent parts of the essay I hadn’t noticed the first time around.