【Unconditional love】

Discuss an accomplishment or event that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

As a child, I always thought being an adult was something that I would grow into. Sometime along my journey through high school and college, I would discover the secrets of responsibility and maturity through participation in clubs, community service, education, friendship, and the love of my family. I learned, however, that adulthood could be sudden and frightening, yet infinitely insightful and gratifying. In the May of my junior year, I became suddenly ill, resulting in a two week hospital stay and lots of missed classes. I was faced with the possibility of being diagnosed with a lifelong, perhaps terminal illness. Being bedridden gave me time to reflect upon all the years that I had been given and what I would like to do if I had any more. Faced with my impending doom in that sterile room, anchored to beeping machines and an entire warehouse worth of plastic tubing, I believed that my youth had finally faded away, and that I could fully grasp the realities of the world I lived in. Thankfully and miraculously, my illness turned out to be nothing serious, though my mother was scared half to death. When I left the hospital, I felt blessed with a second chance.

In the weeks following, I participated in a hands-on cancer research internship at the University of Pittsburgh Summer Academy through the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. My recent experiences gave new meaning to the importance of scientific discoveries in the health world. A month into the internship, I was working at the bench one evening when I received a frantic phone call. My mother had been on the way to fetch me when she was rear-ended by an SUV in her little Honda Accord, and she was being taken to Presbyterian Hospital. Panicked, I ran through a summer thunderstorm across Oakland, hoping I would be there when she arrived. I could hardly stand still while the receptionist searched for records of my mother's admittance. When I was finally led to my mother's room, I had fully prepared myself for the worst of news- paralysis, a coma, the loss of the person I loved most. Just as I stumbled into my mother's room, I was stunned to see her smiling face looking back at me, completely unmarred. I had never been so thankful or humbled by this brush with death. My mother walked away from the accident with slight shell-shock and a fear of driving. I, however, came away from the experience with much more. Standing over my shaken mother in that hospital, I felt like I had taken her place by my sickbed only weeks earlier. In that moment, I finally understood the feeling of unconditional love. I felt the responsibility that came with family, and my heart beating in my chest with the realization that family was the most precious gift that I could have ever been given. When my mother had said she wished she could take away my pain and fever when I was sick, I had thought she merely wanted to comfort me. Now, I know that she meant every word, and that she wanted to take on the suffering herself, if it could only help me a little. Even as I fretted over her CT scan results we had yet to receive, she could only worry about my soaked pants and soggy shoes. I ached to trade places with her in that hospital bed, but I could only wonder at the depths of her unselfishness and endless compassion. In the past, adulthood had signified a collection of experiences that could be added up like Boy Scout badges. In reality, adulthood presented itself to me in a single moment of love, fear, and whole-hearted relief. The day of that accident, I learned that maturity was not merely becoming more appreciative of what I had been given, but using my heart to give that same love back to those who deserve it.