[0:04]Yeah, before I began reading my personal essay, I just want to say one thing. It's really personal and a little emotional, so just a disclaimer, but I don't want to waste too much of your time and I'll start reading it now.
[0:16]I was nine years old when I first asked my mother if she would have been happier if I had never been born. After hours of screaming in pain, holding firmly onto the metal handles of the birthing bed, my mother finally found beauty beyond her suffering: she brought me into life. However, my birth was both a blessing and a curse. After giving birth to me, my mom developed one of the most incapacitating conditions imaginable. Any movement—walking, sitting, or even lying down—would cause sudden bolts of unbearable pain in her pelvis. So from a young age, I learned to be a caretaker, taking on household responsibilities to ease her strain. But as I was burdened with doing the laundry, washing the dishes, and applying cupping therapy to her back every day, I started to resent her. Why couldn't I be like my friends, playing freely outside? “Joowan-ah, Umma’s sorry,” she would whisper in her delicate, trembling voice. Umma, don’t be sorry. There’s nothing to be sorry for. I wished to say these words, but I remained silent, holding back tears—because life felt unfair. As a young child, I had so many aspirations: playing on the school basketball team, traveling the world as an entrepreneur, or even training to be a K-pop star. Yet as I became confined to caretaking my mother, I saw my aspirations fade away like dust. Then she broke the news. She would be leaving for a while to Korea to receive medical care. I imagined a life without her: a life unburdened by her pain, where I could play without worry, focus on school without the constant dread of her next breakdown, and pursue my entrepreneurial dreams without the weight of her suffering. Would I finally be free? Reality quickly set in. The warmth of home disappeared, and with both my dad and brother working full-time to pay the bills, I was alone. I began to miss my mom. I yearned for the dishes I would wash for her, the lavender socks I would fish out from the dryer for her, and even the wafting smell of fermented kimchi we would make together every week. So I started calling her daily. Over the next few months, three-minute phone calls turned into thirty-minute video calls. Our conversations soon evolved from the casual “Jalja” (good night) to a heartfelt “Saranghae, Umma” (I love you, Mom). As I eagerly awaited each morning to see her texts, our relationship blossomed, bringing us closer than ever before. I found myself reframing our relationship from one of pain, guilt, and pressure to understanding the depth of love that lay between us. In the ugly face of adversity, I found beauty—the beauty of an unbreakable bond between a mother and her son. The day of my mom’s return was filled with hugs, kisses, tears, and never-ending laughter. However, reality returned. My mom still struggled to wake up as pain surged through her body. I still did the chores. But something felt different. The burden of responsibility disappeared: it was replaced with beauty. Beauty in the quiet acts of love that speak louder than words. Yes, that’s what it was: a beauty too precious for just the two of us, stirring something deep within me—a desire to help others find the same beauty I discovered in the face of their struggles. But as I step outside my home and into the unknown, where more adversity awaits, my definition of beauty changes. After tutoring my Eritrean refugee student, I greet his mother who works minimum wage to support her family. I leave her only a bag of homemade kimchi, but she invites me in, serving me Eritrean dishes and coffee brewed thick and dark. At church, I clasp the hands of my passionate Bible Study teacher, who lost her son when he was in high school, as we pray together. While serving sandwiches to the unhoused, I share my story with an elderly man about how I found beauty in adversity. In exchange, he shares his story. Moments like these reveal that beauty isn’t just something we find; it’s something we weave together, in the spaces where our lives intersect and our hearts open to one another. That means I’m stitching my life of beauty not alone, but with others—finding and sharing it in every thread. Lying side by side, I turn to my mom and ask, “Umma, so would you really have been happier if I had never been born?” This time, we exchanged smiles. So yeah, that was my personal essay. And the reason why I'm sharing this on YouTube is because maybe it can just help you and inspire you the same way it did to me when I was searching other people's essays and trying to get more inspiration from those. And also, the title says um, this is my personal essay that got me into Stanford. Um, and I just want to make a note that this essay was not the sole reason I probably got into Stanford. There were probably so many other reasons, so it's really subjective in this whole process, like considering your stats, your ECs, your supplementals, so this is probably not the sole reason why I got into Stanford. Last thing, though, I really want to say this writing process is so difficult. This took me from July to September or October to write. And I was really just thinking so much about this idea. And I always knew in the back of my mind that this idea was something that I was going to write about for college apps because I I really do think that it's something that really defined me. But I really just kind of haven't done it without God, without my friends, and other people who supported me and really answered my questions as I was needing desperate help for this essay. But one thing that really, really helped me is before every single writing session, I would just pray to God. Because I am the one who's writing these essays, but at the end of the day, it's God who dictate where I go to, whether that be at um, Stanford or UNC Chapel Hill or some other school that I just never really expected. But yeah, I just hope that was a little bit inspiring and helpful for your journey. If you have any questions, you could just ask me directly. Um, if you think this essay is terrible, you can even comment down below as well. Yeah, hope you like that essay.
