I broke a big rule of college applications by writing about my mother. My love for her got me into Yale and Stanford.

"It's a question she usually asks me whenever I talk about my work. I've been volunteering at senior centers for years, and now I'm studying medicine at Stanford. My mother sees nursing homes as places where families set aside their pasts. I see them as spaces where people who have done the hard work of becoming can finally rest - and be celebrated."

"In my Yale application, I wrote an essay inspired by something my grandmother once told me: My mother's life revolved around teaching me - the one person she couldn't live without - how to one day live without her. The sentiment stuck with me because I didn't always understand the way my mother loved. It was protective, practical, and rarely spoken aloud."

The narrator maintains a complicated relationship with a mother who shows love through practical, protective gestures and repeated pleas to avoid nursing homes. The narrator promised never to place the mother in a nursing home, began volunteering at senior centers from a young age, and now studies medicine at Stanford. The narrator and mother hold opposing views of nursing homes: one sees erasure of family pasts, the other sees rest and celebration. Working through their disagreements shaped the narrator's vocation, deepened mutual love, and became central to college and medical school applications.

Read at Business Insider