Let's Go

Very good start. You know that there are many students who experience this trajectory during the first year; you have animated from within one person's thoughts and feelings, but you have captured that of others in the process. This is how more than one life is changed at a time.

You have real plans. They could be more detailed, and they will be. But they embrace the essential of all strategy: they define objectives rather than assuming them. As you show in your reflections on the arc of growing up within your family, living life to achieve the objectives we actually have—not the ones we think we always have had—can require boldness and a willingness to accept displacement, with its accompanying loss of supposed certainty. So these plans too may change. But what is important is carrying them as far as you can.

Your last paragraph need some work. It reflects our conversations, and your subsequent serious thinking, all of which is good. But one had to be there to understand, because you let a couple of sentences represent the general drift of your thinking rather than clearly explaining it. You can improve on that with the same clarity and candor you bring to the rest of the draft.