[Prompt: Describe a significant event in your life that has influenced your future plans. Tell
us what your plans are and how the significant event helped create those plans.]
As I entered the hospital, the acrid smell of illness and death filled my nostrils. Making my way
along the halls, tightly gripping my grandmother's hand, I could hear muffled screams coming
from the rooms. I wondered how each one had arrived at this precarious position and how the
angels in white were would cure them. I asked a nurse for directions, and we followed his
directions to the end of the hall, where we entered a room unlike any other in the building. In a
place devoid of laughter and hope, this room was the one bright spot in this whole mess of
concrete and cement that could make me smile.
My grandmother wanted me to go in first. As I entered, I saw a familiar figure lying comfortably on
a blanket of white sheets, with several tubes inserted into her body: my great-grandmother. Chills
ran down my spine, and a knot formed in my throat. She slowly sat up, and all at once the
terrifying feeling of being in a hospital was dispelled.
As she smiled at me with her calm eyes, she seemed to gain strength. The instruments that
monitored and controlled her body were allowing her to return to life almost miraculously, as if my
presence motivated her to temporarily reject her own illness. So warm was her greeting that I felt
like a king returning victorious from battle. Yet, despite her appearance of good health, I knew
that her time was drawing to a close.
As I fed her fruits prepared by one of the nurses, she told me of her high expectations of me. She
inspected my eleven-year-old frame and told me I would face great challenges that would
strengthen my mind as well as my soul. Her last words to me were ones of encouragement: she
told me I had the power to achieve anything in this world as long as I wanted it bad enough and
was willing to put in the effort. Those words are precious to me not only because they came from
someone close to my heart, but also because they were spoken by an uniquely strong-willed
woman: a Holocaust survivor, a mother of two, a grandmother of two, and a great-grandmother of
three.
As our conversation drew to a close, a machine attached to her wrist stopped beeping and
started emitting a long, constant series of tones. Hearing the signal, a number of doctors and
nurses abruptly escorted my grandmother and me out of the room and pulled the curtains around
my great-grandmother shut. My grandmother's look was sorrowful; I did not understand her
sadness at the time, because I was too young to realize that, at that very moment, my greatgrandmother had left us for good.
Almost six and a half years later, as I sit in my room, writing this essay and glancing over at my
great-grandmother's picture hanging next to my computer, I can still relive that entire day as if it
had happened yesterday. I am reminded that those who had the privilege of knowing my greatgrandmother, from her life in the Soviet Union to my family's pilgrimage to America, agree that
this woman was as independent, strong, and intelligent as any scientist, doctor, or lawyer on this
planet.
My great-grandmother inspired me to believe that my future is whatever I choose to make of it. As
I ponder my plans to major in law and eventually become a corporate lawyer, my greatgrandmother's words ring in my ears. Those words are forever engraved in my heart, along with
her greatest gift to me: the confidence and desire to achieve.