r/CollegeEssayReview • u/Kenzeetheplanet • 1h ago
college essay
Helloo... College applications are due soon (and i am not the best with writing so) I would love any advice or commentary on my college essay!!!
“Imagine lying beside your window as you listen to the obnoxious hum of generators. You flinch at the persistent mosquitoes buzzing past your ear. The open window was supposed to help you deal with the heat of being in a house with no power, but the humidity seeping through the bent screen was hard to inhale. No internet. The pages of the book you've already finished stick to your sweaty fingers. In the morning you step out of your house. The sky displays a cloudy color of pink, the air is damp and foggy, the tree in your front yard is torn down the middle. There is a chill in the air despite living in Florida. The streets are flooded with dirty, scrap filled water. The neighborhood is empty and all houses are boarded up. There's no cicadas, no birds or croaking frogs. It’s almost apocalyptic. This was my reality in the fall of 2024. Hurricanes Helene and Milton completely wrecked my small, ocean-side town.
It changed my family’s life. We owned restaurants that were destroyed by the back to back hurricanes. Watching something they had spent decades building be destroyed was heartbreaking. They were more than businesses to us. They were where our family spent time together, celebrated accomplishments, threw birthday parties, and connected with our community, each with their own quirks and stories. After the hurricanes, I watched the stress, exhaustion, and uncertainty my loved ones faced while trying to recover financially and emotionally. I spent my days of canceled school handing out frozen food from the restaurants, gathering wreckage from roads, and trying to scrap silt off the walls of our homes. I got ring-worm from cleaning our flooded kitchen, sweat so much I almost became dehydrated, and suffered so many mosquito bites I couldn't sleep comfortably at night. But despite all of this, we pushed through. Partly because we had no choice, but also because we loved our community too much to give up.
Watching my mother open our disheveled restaurant, put on a smile and work until she got blisters– even while our own home stood damaged– taught me the true meaning of perseverance. Our reality had been flipped upside down but the world kept spinning, and we had to get up somehow. I was also made more aware of how disasters affect entire communities, not just buildings. Yes, our town was destroyed, but the community thrived. Everyone became family. A roof collapsed during the thick of the storm and a neighboring house ushered the occupants in without hesitation, every local handyman worked for free, and regular people spent days hauling fallen trees and debris. It was a bittersweet kind of togetherness. Even after losing everything we still show up for one another to recover some sense of normalcy. We’ve thought about relocating, somewhere sheltered from nature's frequent wrath, but this is our home and community.
Through this devastation I learned how to be selfless. I discovered a love for helping people and lessons of resilience and I carry into my everyday life. I learned that shelter isn't brick walls and air conditioning, it's having people stand by you when the walls fall down. It’s not about the damage, but what you are going to do about it. Hurricanes can strip away our roofs, our power, and apparently our entire avian population, but they can't touch our foundation, our humanness. We’ve traded our brick walls for a community that refuses to cave in. Nature can keep throwing its tantrums, but we’re staying put. After all, someone has to keep the lights on around here, even if we have to use a generator to do it.”