College Admissions Essay: I Want To Be A Hero

To say I’ve always wanted to be a doctor would be a stretch, I wanted to be a Pokemon trainer till I was eight and found out they weren’t real. Then I wanted to be a power ranger, the red one to be specific, until again reality crushed my dreams. When I turned fifteen, I had already dreamt about being almost every major character on every show I have ever watched. None of these provided me with great paths to a future career, but a noticeable trend was showing, I always wanted to be the hero. I wanted to be the character that helped people, brought joy to their lives, and worked with them till they overcame the difficulties and obstacles they were facing. I now know that doctors are as close as I can get to becoming the “hero” I always wanted to be.

As I grew up, I learned of another serious problem, the issue of mental health. It occurs all around us, but society frequently turns a blind eye to it. Like many people, I go through my ups and downs in life, I have the days where nothing in the world seems right and days where it feels like nothing can go wrong but I never personally knew the extent of damage mental health can do to someone. That was until a year ago, when I lost a very dear friend of mine, a person I cared for a lot. She had been battling depression her whole life and
That is exactly society’s challenge with mental health, it has no physical manifestations. Growing up in the Middle-East means I grew up in a society where awareness about mental health is limited, and the stigma of mental health issues leads to the isolation of the people suffering from it. Mental health is an issue to that should be addressed and the people affected by it should be cared for. People struggling with depression need to know they are cared for, that their lives are more valuable than they think it is, and we as a society need to provide them with the necessary