feedback please?

(prompt)Please provide a 500 word essay on the following: Who has been the biggest influence in your life and how has this person impacted your decision to go to college? Additionally, what are some of the challenges or barriers that you foresee in going to college and how do you plan to overcome them?

(essay)I fully understand that the prompt asks for someone who has been the biggest influence and impact towards my college decisions. But I must truthfully respond by saying that I don’t feel I have someone in particular that I could mention, except for the people that have somehow been involved in my life and also, myself.

I hope that doesn’t make me sound like I think “the world revolves around me” or that I seclude myself from society because I LOVE interacting and communicating with people. In fact, I enjoy being the leader of groups when I dedicate myself to an organization such as color guard (school band related) or student council.

During my junior year as color guard captain, I learned so much about myself that I consider it to be my year of greatest impact, to date. I hope to use the many learned lessons, mistakes, and assumptions as the ways I do not want to see myself in the future but also as who I want to be.

As captain I tired too hard to be perfect and by doing that I was not real. I lost the ability of being able to express feelings other than anger and frustration and also the capability to hold a friendship. I also tried to make the other squad members perfect so that they could live up to my expectations. Expectations I set impossibly high that no flag could ever reach no matter how hard or powerful the flag was tossed. I wanted them to be like me, perfect like me. But nobody is perfect.

After a fallen year, I was presented with another chance to be a leader when the student council elections were announced. I was scared because I remembered what I was like as a leader. Actually, I remembered what I DID NOT want to be like as a leader—so I went for it.

When I read my name on the sheet of paper stating that I would be next year’s senior class vice president, I went through the exact same feeling I had experienced just a year ago when I was given the title of color guard captain. Yes, it was the exact same feeling but my intentions of being a leader are completely different now.

I will be dealing, interacting, and communicating with people in college AND the rest of my life! No title, position, or acceptance letter gives a person the right to treat others in an inhumane way. I know I will stumble during my college years but I will not fall, and if I fall I will get right back on my feet and not let those that first trusted and believed in me down, especially myself.

There is always room for improvement and I know that college will test me on that. I will not expect perfection from myself or others, just best performance.