Need HELP with adversity secondaries!!

[narutoverse13]

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Hey! So I'm not quite sure how to write about adversity. It feels like I know what it is, but I'm not quite sure how to write about it. Which of these would be the best to talk about? Is this mostly just adversity in college or like throughout your life? Are these scenarios too personal?

1) My mom was sick for most of undergrad, so I had to do a lot of driving to and fro from my dad's business to help him run his business and take classes as well while maintaining good grades, volunteering, etc. Taught me a lot about discipline and valuing others.
2) Another example is where I overcame shyness and developed my own identity. Strict Asian household that prevented me from talking with others (consequence is possibly being disowned). Coming to college allowed me to not be egocentric, more open-minded, and breakaway from the toxic culture. And, volunteering and college helped me overcome that and impact other people's lives.
3) Similar to #1, I spent most of my life after age 10 (this sometimes applied in college) helping my parents (immigrant) at their hotel every summer (~60hrs/week) and after school (~20hrs/week) due to my mom's constant back problems, so I never really had a normal childhood of hanging out with friends, going vacationing, etc. I initially was sad, but I learned about the virtues of tenacity and never giving up despite the circumstances I was in. I channeled my saltiness about my life into determination. This work ethic instilled in me helped me become very focused on my goals and always work hard for what I want/ambition and always try to find the positives in adversity.

4) (A tamer one). I had adversity in struggling to choose between rules and ethics. Often times at a food pantry I volunteer at, we would get a person experiencing homelessness who would be very hungry; however, our rules only allowed them to get a limited amount of food due to constraints on food supply for the rest of the masses. I often wanted to give more food but understood that that would break rules and prevent others from possibly eating. So, I asked local organizations (walmart, local farmers market, etc) to donate their leftovers to the food pantry to increase the food supply and that has been working well now!

Would love some brutally honest feedback. @Goro @LizzyM @gyngyn @ everyone

 

[LizzyM]

I like #4 for a problem solving prompt and I like #1 and #3 but not the sadness. Be careful how you define "normal childhood" -- two of my fellow adcoms and I spent our childhoods in our families' retail businesses. That said, growing up with responsibilities and part of a team and dealing with the public (or seeing how your father dealt with the public) were valuable and working that into an essay about adversity tells me something about you that might be otherwise missing from your application whereas the food pantry thing might be in your experience section already.

 

[Lifeblood_20]

breakaway from the toxic culture

I would be careful about writing things like this.

 

[narutoverse13]

I like #4 for a problem solving prompt and I like #1 and #3 but not the sadness. Be careful how you define "normal childhood" -- two of my fellow adcoms and I spent our childhoods in our families' retail businesses. That said, growing up with responsibilities and part of a team and dealing with the public (or seeing how your father dealt with the public) were valuable and working that into an essay about adversity tells me something about you that might be otherwise missing from your application whereas the food pantry thing might be in your experience section already.

Thanks for the input! This is where I struggle with understanding how to write about adversity without making it a sob story. When I think of adversity, I think of some sort of difficulty in life. Would it better if I worded it like this: Due to my mother's poor health and poverty, I saw my father work countless hours to support our family. To help him, I stepped up and spent the majority of my childhood and young adulthood helping my father operate his hotel, including doing managerial, janitorial, and housekeeping duties. I also took time to care for my mother as well. In high school and college, it was very difficult balancing assisting my family, maintaining grades, and doing my other extracurriculars. I overcame this by developing better time management skills and creating a priorities list of when I should study, help my family, volunteer, etc. Working with my father, interacting with the public almost every day at a young age, and taking care of my mother were all incredible valuable experiences for me that helped me develop my interpersonal skills, learn the value of working together for a cause, and become tenacious.

 

[LizzyM]

Be careful about claiming poverty if your family owned a hotel. Although I know from personal experience that the margins are thin and being a business owner does not always equate with affluence, I have seen some adcom members treat applicants harshly when they claimed "disadvantage" or "adversity" but had ownership of a family business.

 

[narutoverse13]

Be careful about claiming poverty if your family owned a hotel. Although I know from personal experience that the margins are thin and being a business owner does not always equate with affluence, I have seen some adcom members treat applicants harshly when they claimed "disadvantage" or "adversity" but had ownership of a family business.

Explaining that would be another paragraph, so I'll just get rid of it. Besides that, do you think this would be fine for an adversity topic?

 

[LizzyM]

What exactly is the prompt?

 

[narutoverse13]

What exactly is the prompt?

I haven't started any of my secondaries yet, but I know that adversity is generally a topic on several secondaries. I just didn't know if this would be an okay "baseline" adversity from which I could edit/change depending on the prompt.

 

[LizzyM]

You really need to tailor to the prompt. Some will want to know your coping skills which is different than knowing how you overcame adversity by your specific actions. Sort of how you deal with changing the things you can control and how you deal with those things you can't control or that you have to deal with because the change you want to see happens so slowly if at all. Different prompts different essays. It is too obvious when the essay is generic and is not a good fit with the prompt.

 

[narutoverse13]

You really need to tailor to the prompt. Some will want to know your coping skills which is different than knowing how you overcame adversity by your specific actions. Sort of how you deal with changing the things you can control and how you deal with those things you can't control or that you have to deal with because the change you want to see happens so slowly if at all. Different prompts different essays. It is too obvious when the essay is generic and is not a good fit with the prompt.

I definitely understand! And that's why I was wondering if this is an okay "in-general" baseline that can be tweaked per prompt. If it was coping, for example, then one thing I could mention was the stress associated with keeping up my schedule and knowing I'd be doing this for quite a while due to my mom's back issues. A big part of my app is volunteering, so volunteering in my community always helped lower my stress. I'd also love writing my thoughts down in a diary, running, and talking with my peers. Also, any thoughts @Goro