commonapp wheeeee

Common App Topic #5: Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.
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I grew up learning to rely on myself. Growing up in two countries, three states, and four cities meant that I was frequently placed into new situations without any parental guidance, and because of it I took pride in making my own decisions. My parents were overprotective in the sense that they had a path and goal set for my life; basically, get good grades and become a doctor. I chose all my classes in high school myself- I have never taken a subject I didn't want to learn, and I have chosen STEM over medicine, which my parents have respected.

During freshman year, I learned about the annual school blood drive. Driven by a desire to do good in the all the ways I could, by all the means I had, I was excited to put myself out there, donate my blood, and make a difference in other peoples’ lives. The first obstacle was realizing that I had to be seventeen to donate. Oops.

The second, encountered at the beginning of this school year, was my parents’ adamant refusal. I don’t understand why I felt the pressing need to inform my mother of my commitment to donating blood the next day, but as I set my lunchbox down on the counter, I blurted it out.

She set down the vegetables she was washing, slowly, calmly. She turned around, and told me very clearly, “No.”
I ignored her and went up to my room, convinced that her heart was simply as stone-cold as the face she had shown me at that moment. I was in the right; I was being a good person, and she was worrying needlessly over some one-in-a-million complication.
My parents had a very long and serious talk with me that evening, demanding that I not do it. No, not really a talk. They talked. I refused to speak to them.

I gave blood the next day. On the ride to work, I hid the bandaid with my sweater. My dad didn’t say anything. On the ride home from work, my mom knew I had given blood. She said the color had gone out of my face, and I sat in the backseat, refusing, again, to speak a single word.

I received no words in response that night; not even a reprimand. The next day, I received an email: “Anne, you can make your own decisions now. We cannot stop you anymore.”

I was terrified. I considered myself independent, and I placed full confidence in my ability to carry out my own affairs- or at least that was what I told myself. When I received that email, I realized that all along I had been hiding behind my parents. As a child, I could justify anything I did as fulfilling something my parents wanted out of me, placing it all behind a guise of self-reliance. What this one email told me was that I couldn’t do that anymore. The responsibility for my actions would be mine alone to bear.

It was liberating. What changed with that email was not so much how my parents treated me, for they have always afforded me a degree of independence in choosing my own fate. What changed was how I began to evaluate my own actions. Now, I find myself considering carefully the consequences of my actions- who will this affect? What will it change? Is that really what I want to happen? I used to have a problem with speaking too much, but now, I speak deliberately- I consider what my words will mean and what they may set in motion, and as a result, my friends have begun to trust me more.

The idea of responsibility terrified me then and it still scares me, just a little. But it is freedom too. The freedom that as long as I’m doing what I really want to, I can do anything.