Scholarship Essays for College Admissions

Although I have always known my mother to be a remarkable person, there has always been something that makes me dismiss what she says as wrong. Sometimes I will catch myself thinking, “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” I believe that the way she speaks, or perhaps the accent it is filtered through, is the cause of this preposterous thought. I used to see this as her flaw- the flaw that makes it hard for others to understand her. Until recently, I never truly understood how amazing my mother is. She immersed herself into a country that was not her own, learned to speak two languages fluently (with a few imperfections here and there), struggled with living in a completely new culture, and to top it all off, she had the courage to never quit. She had to teach herself English through her interactions with others. I never realized how amazing this was until I tried to do the same. It is here that Newton’s law begins to take shape.

In Santander, in the northern part of Spain, my friend Nicole and I decided to cook dinner for the host family we were staying with while studying abroad. This gesture was partly to thank them for the wonderful experience they had provided us with, but mostly because we absolutely hated Spanish food, and we were getting tired of feigning small appetites. So, we decided to go to Lupa, a popular market, and quickly pick up some things to make a really simple pasta primavera and a fruit salad. easy enough.

Most Spanish markets contain machines that produce small slips of paper, telling how much the selected produce will cost. Although this machine provided me with an assortment of labeled buttons, it was in Spanish. The situation had now become significantly more challenging. Unfortunately, in my ‘extensive’ studies of the Spanish language I must have forgotten to review the words for fruits, vegetables, and all other similar produce. If written in English this would have been a simple task, but not knowing the word for cherry.or melon.or red pepper.or basically anything specific, threw me into a position that I was not accustomed to. I stood there in front of the machine, a bag of broccoli in one hand, and my head in the other. Eventually, after a couple of awkward attempts at figuring it out myself, I asked the woman working the vegetable aisle for assistance in weighing everything.

To add to the day’s confusion, I later found myself lost in the supermarket holding a package of meat that said ‘pechuga de pollo.’ Okay, I thought.Pollo means chicken.all right.makes sense.but pechuga? My only option was to ask, “Perdón, que parte del pollo es esto?” in what I suddenly realized was a horrible accent and very likely incorrect grammar. With a slight laugh in her voice, she tried explaining it to me in Spanish, which was, at this rate, obviously not going to work out. So she was forced to pound on her chest with her fists. That’s when the charades made sense; she was saying chicken breast! Embarrassed, I managed to cough out a thank you and run to the tomato sauce aisle. This was a new low for me - I could not even recognize a chicken breast when it was staring me right in the face.

Once removed from this awkward situation, I realized that by embarrassing myself, I had been forced to communicate in a language that was not my own. I have heard my own mother mispronounce English words, saying, “high-eh-school” instead of “high school,” and I have rolled my eyes and laughed. I can now picture my mother having to immerse herself in a completely new language, not knowing all the right words to say, and at times feeling embarrassed, and completely alone.

My mother could have made it easier for herself by deciding to speak to me in Spanish, but instead she chose to speak with me in English. Her accent and her grammar may sometimes be incorrect, but at least she tries. This made me realize that just the simple act of trying was enough. Maybe I did not pronounce all the words correctly, and maybe there were many an imperfection here and there, but that was enough. Only through trial and error can one learn to better themselves, and I can honestly say that this incident has made me a better person.