essay about the day my life changed

Essays About Life-changing Experiences: 5 Examples

Discover our guide for writing essays about life-changing experiences that combine three different elements: narrative, description, and self-reflection. 

Each of us has gone through life-changing experiences that shaped us into the individuals we are today. Because of how powerful they are, these events make for fascinating topics in writing. This subject doesn’t only let us tell our life stories, and it also pushes us to evaluate our behavior and reflect on why an incident happened.

Attract your readers by creating an excellent introduction and choosing a unique or exciting encounter. Paint a picture of the events that describe your experience vividly and finish with a strong conclusion.

5 Essay Examples

1. long essay on experience that changed my life by prasanna, 2. life-changing events: personal experience by anonymous on studycorgi.com, 3. my example of a life-changing experience by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 4. life-changing experience: death essay by writer annie, 5. a life-changing experience during the holiday season by anonymous on studymoose.com, 1. life-changing experience: defined, 2. the experience that changed my life, 3. life-changing events and how they impact lives, 4. everyday events that change a person’s life, 5. the person who change my life, 6. books or movies that changed my life, 7. a life-changing quote.

“Experiences can be good and sometimes terrible that results in a positive or negative impact on one’s life. Life is full of many unexpected challenges and unknown turning points that will come along any time. People must learn and grow from every experience that they go through in life rather than losing yourself.”

In this essay, Prasanna discusses her father’s death as her most challenging life-changing experience. She was cheerful, immature, and carefree when her father was still alive. However, when her father left, she became the decision-maker of their family because her mother was unable to.

Prasanna mentions that she lost not only a father but also a friend, motivator, and mentor. That sad and unexpected experience turned her into an introverted, mature, and responsible head of the family. Ultimately, she thanks her father for making her a better person, and because of the devastating incident, she realizes who she can trust and how she should handle the real world. You might also be interested in these essays about choice .

“In life, certain experiences present challenges that change the way people relate to themselves and their families. Certain life events mark life-changing moments that alter lives either positively or negatively. It matters how people handle their relationships at such critical moments.”

This essay contains two life events that helped the author become a better person. These events taught them to trust and appreciate people, be responsible, and value family. The first event is when their best friend passes away, leading to stress, loss of appetite, and depression. The second circumstance happened when the author postponed their studies because they were afraid to grow up and be accountable for their decisions and actions.

The writer’s family showed them love, support, and understanding through these events. These events changed their behavior, attitude, and perspective on life and guided them to strengthen family relationships.

For help picking your next essay topic, check out our 20 engaging essay topics about family .

“I thought it was awkward because he looked and acted very professional. In that moment I thought to myself, ‘this person is going to have a great impact in my life!’. I was very curious to meet him and get a chance to show him my personality.”

This essay proves that you should always believe in yourself and not be afraid to try something new. The author recalls when they had many problems and met an extraordinary person who changed their life. 

When they were in sixth grade, the writer had life issues that caused them to be anxious about any future endeavor. The author then says they don’t usually open up to teachers because they fear their reactions. Then they met Mr. Salazar, a mentor who respects and values them, and the writer considers him their best friend.

“When the funeral was over and he was laid to rest, I had a feeling I can’t even describe. It was almost an empty feeling. I knew I had lost someone that could never be replaced.”

Annie never thought that she’d go through a life-changing experience until the sudden death of her father. Her thoughts and feelings are all over the place, and she has many unanswered questions. She says that although she will never wish for anyone to experience the same. However, her father’s passing improved her life in some ways.

Her mother remarried and introduced a new father figure, who was very kind to her. Living with her stepdad allowed her to explore and do things she thought she couldn’t. Annie still mourns the loss of her birth father, but she is also grateful to have a stepdad she can lean on. She gradually accepts that she can’t bring her birth father back.

“This story as a whole has really changed me and made me an even better person in life, I’m so thankful that this happened to me because now I have a greater appreciation for the little things in life.”

The essay shows how a simple interaction on a cold day in December can completely change a person’s view on life. It starts with the writer being asked a small favor of an older man with Alzheimer’s disease to help him find his car. This experience teaches the writer to be more observant and appreciative of the things they have. The author was inspired to spend more time with loved ones, especially their grandfather, who also has Alzheimer’s disease, as they learned never to take anything for granted.

7 Prompts for Essays About Life-changing Experiences

Everyone has their definition of a life-changing experience. But in general, it is an event or series of events profoundly altering a person’s thinking, feelings, and behavior. Use this prompt to explain your understanding of the topic and discuss how a simple action, decision, or encounter can change someone’s life. You might also be interested in these essays about yourself .

For this prompt, choose a specific memory that made you re-evaluate your views, values, and morals. Then, discuss the impact of this event on your life. For example, you can discuss losing a loved one, moving to another country, or starting a new school. Your conclusion must contain the main lessons you learned from the experience and how it can help the readers.

Various positive and negative life-changing experiences happen anytime and anywhere. Sometimes, you don’t notice them until they substantially disturb your everyday life. 

To begin your essay, interview people and ask about a momentous event that happened to them and how it influenced their way of living. Then, pick the most potent life-changing experience shared. Talk about what you’d do if you were in the same situation.

Some life-changing events include common things such as marriage, parenthood, divorce, job loss, and death. Research and discuss the most common experiences that transform a person’s life. Include real-life situations and any personal encounters for an intriguing essay.

It’s normal to meet other people, but connecting with someone who will significantly impact your life is a blessing. Use this prompt to discuss that particular person, such as a parent, close friend, or romantic partner. Share who they are and how you met them, and discuss what they did or said that made a big difference in your life. 

Movies like “The Truman Show” help change your viewpoint in life. They open our minds and provide ideas for dealing with our struggles. Share how you reached an epiphany by reading a book or watching a movie. Include if it’s because of a particular dialogue, character action, or scenes you can relate to.

While others use inspirational quotes for comfort and to avoid negative thinking, some find a quote that gives them the courage to make drastic changes to better their lives. For this prompt, search for well-known personalities who discovered a quote that motivated them to turn their life around.  Essay Tip: When editing for grammar, we also recommend spending time and effort to improve the readability score of your essay before publishing or submitting it.

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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The Day My Life Changed, Essay Example

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When my mother died, my life changed completely. All my life, I had never imagined what would happen if my mother was to die. When it happened, I suddenly, I realized I was the only person who should take the responsibility of offering moral, financial and psychological support to everyone at home, including my 16 year-old sister.

My mother’s death brought about very many changes in my entire life. All of a sudden, I had to stand and become the head of the family. Although this task seemed very challenging, I had no option but do what I had to do in order to ensure that our family was always provided for. The days ahead promised to be difficult. I had to mourn her death as well as learn so many lessons and apply them within no time. Suddenly, I realized what my mother had been going through when she was bringing us up. I realized what it was like to be a mother. At this point, a sudden wave of loneliness hit me and a cried for a very long time.

Life was complicated by the fact that I had just settled into married life and even had a kid. My mother’s death came when I was already trying to adapt into married life. This seemed to be a real challenge since I was also deeply worried about my music career prospects.

My sister was more affected by my mother’s death than I was. In fact, she is the one that made me see the sense in assuming the role of a parent as soon as possible after my mother’s death. I also got encouragement from relatives, friends, neighbors and well-wishers. During the first week after her death, I would spend long hours thinking about the tasks that lay ahead and whether or not I would be able to achieve them.

Immediately my mother died, I realized that I had taken many things for granted in life. When she lived, my mother often used to advise me about setting priorities right. It was her counsel that propelled me into facing the daily family problems that my sister, my husband and I were facing. The immediate problems arose partly because of my mother’s death after a short illness and partly because I perceived myself not to be doing enough to do what a person of my age should do under my circumstances.

My mother had always wanted us all to relocate to New York. In fact, two weeks before her death, she had rented an apartment in the outskirts of the city. I had accompanied her when she went to New York to ensure that everything was in the right place before we relocated. She had hoped that within a month’s time, we would have moved. I took it upon myself to ensure that mother’s wish came true. I did not underestimate the difficulty of the task but I did not cry helplessly over it. Instead, I rose to the challenge.

It is three weeks since my mother died and we still have not relocated. The delay was brought by the fact that I had to first look for an appropriate high school for my sister so that relocating would not interrupt her studies. My husband has been very supportive and he assures me that we have to move into the new home tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Meanwhile, I am learning more and more lessons about how to be a mother every passing day and it is far from easy.

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The Day That Changed My Life

In the summer between middle and high school, I spent an afternoon in the window of our family’s seafront budget-friendly room watching an artist sculpt a giant Jesus in the sand. We were on vacation in Ocean City, Maryland, the noisy little strand along the Atlantic Ocean where we went every summer. This year was different. On the advice of a family friend, we stayed at the Plim Plaza hotel. It was right on the boardwalk and quite a departure from the quaint bayside inn where we’d spent three or four nights every July before this one. The Plim Plaza was an OK hotel, I suppose, if not for a slow elevator, small rooms, a lack of private balconies, and the fact that my father kept calling it a dump. These all were cosmetic problems compared to the real trouble hanging over the trip: the indisputable fact that I was 13.

Their names were Annie and Kelli, smart and funny and pretty classmates who’d only recently started to invite me to the cool kids’ eighth-grade parties. These gatherings were stressful affairs in which I rarely spoke, dodged games of spin the bottle, and watched Faces of Death VHS tapes that kept me awake for weeks. But being a part of them somehow felt like the key to a better future. At some point that summer, the three of us learned that our family vacations to Ocean City would overlap and we agreed to meet. This was 1993, though, somewhere in between Prodigy and Netscape Navigator in technology years, so hotel-to-hotel calls were our only method of communication. Annie and Kelli left the arrangements in a message on our touch-tone room phone one morning: The plan was that they’d walk down the boardwalk at some point that afternoon and wave at me to come down.

I went to the window at exactly noon and waited for “some point that afternoon” to arrive. My brother, Kenny, two years younger and with no use for girls at the time, came in and out of the room for drink boxes and bathroom breaks, hauling his boogie board and wondering why I couldn’t ride waves with him. “They’re the big ones,” he said, hoping to cure me of the teenage condition.

My ailments were much larger than the ocean. I was a skinny first-year teenager with a wardrobe of loose-fitting T-shirts and baggy jean shorts, and a bowl haircut that wrapped from ear to ear. Kenny went off and rode the big ones while I perched in that window, watching people on the boardwalk stroll past the man sculpting the savior.

It’s not a stretch to say that a 13-year-old in 1993 was one of the most uncomfortable living beings in modern history. Hear me out: I was born in 1979, squarely in the middle of the four-year period between 1977 and 1981, putting me at the center of a weird group of about 20 million Americans lost between Generation X and the almighty millennials. We are defined by our lack of definition. We don’t make sense. As we’ve grown up, we’re cynical yet hopeful; loners who believe in being parts of a community; aware that popularity leads to success , but rejecting the sameness of the internet age—an age that took off, by the way, the year we were 13.

Now consider this: I was raised in Maryland, a state that isn’t really Northern and isn’t really Southern, a state next to the nation’s capital, where people make a living flip-flopping. There’s a reason Marylanders boast about their state flag and crabs—these things give us some semblance of an identity.

Also consider that I grew up in a rural area of this in-between state, in a house on a dirt road about a mile back in the woods. We were about 15 minutes from the closest grocery store but only 35 miles from the White House in the center of one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world.

What I’m saying is that you’ve been fairly warned that this is the story of the most awkward afternoon from the most awkward year in the life of the most awkward boy from the most awkward place and the most awkward generation, and if you choose to read on, you run the risk of learning that we’re not all that different.

The Ocean City boardwalk was our family’s summer landing strip. Every year, we rolled over the Route 50 drawbridge and onto the busy island in Mom’s silver Chevrolet Celebrity, which had a tape player that was licensed to play only Rod Stewart cassettes and the Dirty Dancing soundtrack over and over. It was the time of our lives.

Related: 17 Quotes About Living a Beautiful Life

As we crossed the bridge, to our left we could see the go-kart tracks and mini-golf courses we’d dreamed of all year, and to the right were a pair of tall waterslides that went straight down and the Tidal Wave roller coaster, which went upside down three times going forward and upside down again three times going backward, which means it went upside down six times.

Just to the right of the drawbridge was Talbot Street Pier, the bayside motel where we stayed in my earliest years. For $69 a night, we got two double beds, a small fridge, a clean bathroom, unlimited access to the cigarette and gumball machines in the lobby, and a private balcony that overlooked a pier filled with charter boats where I met my first dead shark. Downstairs was a bar called M.R. Ducks, which sold M.R. Ducks T-shirts, which were in every Marylander’s closet. Dad had one with a breast pocket for his Winston Lights.

The years at Talbot Street, to my memory, were better than all of the other years. Dad would always take a day to himself and go deep-sea fishing. On the other days, he went to the beach with us and filled buckets with surf-water and sand and dumped them on our heads. At nights, we went to the Trimper’s amusement park, where I rode my first Tilt-A-Whirl. Most of the kiddie rides in the park had horns similar to that of an old Model T horn. As the sun set on these summer nights in Ocean City, the park sounded like the scene of a mass duck slaughter, but to me it still brings back the most pleasant memories.

At night on Talbot Street, we sat in plastic chairs on our third-floor balcony. We rested our drinks on the backside of a humming window-unit air conditioner while we watched the bar crowd come and go below us. Here we could hear the nylon boat ropes strain and slacken, the ding-ding-ding of the drawbridge opening, and the captains honking thank you as they passed through. Kenny and I went to bed early in those years, falling asleep listening to our parents talk outside the window.

One year when I was maybe 6, I woke up to a Smokey the Bear infomercial about preventing forest fires. For some reason I remember this as the first moment in my life when I gave any serious thought to the idea of death. A vacation is quite a time for your mind to reach for the end of infinity. I opened the balcony door crying and tried to explain what Smokey had done. Dad scooped me up. “You don’t have to worry about dying for a long time,” he said. “Just look at all the people at the bar. Look at the pretty girls, Mike.”

“Oh, Freddie! Stop,” Mom huffed.

“What?” he laughed. “It’s fine.”

I hopped down and stuck my face through the railing and squeaked out a hello to the young women. When they looked up and waved back, I giggled and felt better about the future.

Now here I was again, older and with that bowl haircut in our very different hotel, waiting for another wave from girls.

I flipped between MTV and VH1 during a strange summer in music. “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” dominated both stations, four years after The Proclaimers released it. UB40’s cover of Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You” also received a good bit of attention, in no small part because one version of the video included clips of Sharon Stone and Billy Baldwin tearing each other’s clothes off in the movie Sliver .

Hours passed. Outside the window the sand kept changing. The artist was creating an image of the crucifixion with a message beside it to let me know that Jesus died for me—a hormonal teenage boy who was quietly ruining his family’s vacation.

The artist, Randy Hofman, started creating sand sculptures at that spot on Second Street in the early 1980s. Whenever rain or wind eroded his work, Hofman brought the Lord to life again. I’m sure some people find meaning in that, but to a teenage boy the sand sculptures had the same effect as Smokey the Bear. So I sat in that window, Sharon Stone inside and Sand Jesus outside, pondering sex and the afterlife.

Look , I told myself, You’ve kissed a girl before. Remember that time with [name redacted to protect her from humiliation] in the elevator at school? Oh yeah, that happened. For every memory like that, though, there was another of me sitting by myself at middle-school dances, nervously sipping soda to keep my hands busy while everyone else danced. I’d smile whenever a teacher walked by to ask how I was doing, because if there’s anything worse than being awkward it’s admitting to an old person that you don’t know how to jump around, jump around, jump up, jump up and get down.

Related: 12 Confidence-Boosting Songs to Pump You Up

Religion was an equally complicated matter. My father was never a believer. When he was 13 or 14, he and some friends were in a classroom at Mackin Catholic School—an all-boys high school in Washington in the 1950s—when they saw prostitutes standing on the corner of 14th and V Streets. The boys all went to the window. The Catholic brother in charge of the class got mad and smacked my father on the back of the leg with a tassel, so Dad turned around and punched the guy and got himself expelled.

I remained hopeful as I sat in the window that at some point I would get to second base and go to heaven.

Still, despite my failings at middle school dances and being the son of man who hurled a fist at a man of the Lord, I remained hopeful as I sat in the window that at some point I would get to second base and go to heaven.

This is the great power of Ocean City. It’s a place where the smell of vinegar from Thrasher’s French Fries or the sight of the giant Ferris wheel or the cha-chunk cha-chunk cha-chunk of tickets spitting out of Skee-Ball machines will light nostalgic memories in anybody who’s been there before. But it’s still a vacation destination , and vacation destinations by definition should make you feel better than you do back there, wherever there is, be it a spot on a map or a point in time you want to forget. These are places that sell the restorative power of faith and hope, heavily marketed stretches of sand that appeal to the American optimist. They’re places that make a 13-year-old boy believe he might get lucky one day and when he does the bells will ring and all the lights in the arcade will flash at once.

Or something like that.

“You’re gonna waste your vacation sitting inside, boy,” my father interrupted with the turn of a key. “Your brother’s been out there in the water all day.”

“I’m waiting on my friends , Dad.”

“Well,” he said, “where are they?”

The afternoon slipped away, and sunburned people made their way off the beach. Mom and Dad and Kenny came back and started to take showers and talk about what we’d eat.

In the downstairs of our hotel was a restaurant named Paul Revere Smorgasbord. Propeller planes pulled signs behind their tails that advertised the smorgasbord’s $6.99 all-you-can-eat buffet. If you think about it, Paul Revere is an odd name to put on a restaurant in a city that sells happy memories and the prospect of good news ahead, but I do remember the place offered Jell-O at the end of the buffet line. Who doesn’t look forward to going back to that?

Dinner in Ocean City was my father’s comedy stage. The joke was the same every year, at every restaurant. Whenever a young waitress approached the table, Dad did his best to embarrass me and Kenny. “Can I introduce you to my son? He’s shy,” he’d say.

I’d turn red and wonder what it was like to have a normal father, but now I understand his lesson .

“You need to stop caring so much about what people think,” he’d say.

Related: 12 Things Truly Confident People Do Differently

So this year, in the Plim Plaza window, I decided I would do just that.

“I’m gonna stay here,” I told them of my dinner plans, “and wait for my friends.”

“Like hell you are,” my father said.

It was then, or sometime not long after then, that I looked out the window and saw them. Kelli had flat, dark hair and Annie had dirty-blonde bangs, and there they were! Kelli looked up and tilted her head as she waved one of those joking waves, pretending she was a queen in a parade. She was so funny! She also had a curious look on her face, probably because I was sitting in the window and we didn’t have a balcony, but that’s OK, I told myself, because as soon as I got downstairs, I’d explain that we didn’t usually stay here and that we didn’t know about the slow elevator or the small rooms or the lack of balconies or that the place was a dump, and yes, I’d tell them all of this as we walked up and down the boardwalk all night! I said goodbye to my family and opened the door and bypassed the elevator and ran down the stairs and through the lobby and then, when I got to the glass door that opened to the steps to the boardwalk, I stopped.

Be cool , I told myself.

I walked out the door nonchalantly.

“Hey,” I said to them.

“Were you just sitting in that window all day?” Kelli asked.

No, no, definitely not. What loser would do that?

“Nah, not really.”

They’re looking up at the room. Oh, no! What are they looking at? Oh, no, what are they waving at?

“Is that your dad?”

I stared at Sand Jesus and wished they were talking about another father in another window. I guess some prayers go unanswered, because when I turned around there was my old man, grinning goofily with his mouth closed and head tilted to the side.

In that moment I not only abandoned any hope of being more than friends with either of these girls, I started getting nostalgic for those nightmarish Faces of Death movies, knowing I’d seen my last party with cool kids.

I turned to walk down the boardwalk, trying to get as far away from that window as possible. With each step, Kelli and Annie regaled me in the story of their day, of lounging by the pool and going to the beach and laughing all afternoon long while I sat in the window waiting for them.

Somehow they seemed older. They’d been in summer meetings for the high school field hockey team, and they seemed to have their own language. They would speak an entire sentence from start to finish and then use the word “psych.” This was short for “psych out,” and it was an atomic bomb in 1990s teenage lingo, blasting all meaning in the previous sentence and leaving anyone who believed a word of it searching for signs that it ever existed. For instance, they might say, “Oh, we should go into that arcade,” and I might say, “That sounds like fun!” at which point they’d say, “Psych!”

They were friendly as always, but they talked to each other more than to me as we walked on, past all the places I loved as a kid. Somewhere around the amusement park, they started talking about the two boys they’d met at summer camp, two boys who were by now very serious boyfriends.

My throat felt like I’d swallowed a Skee-Ball. All around me the air filled with the sound of kids honking those duck-murdering horns. I tried to be cool about it. I told them it was great news. As I tried to process the latest in a long line of women I’d never kiss, we reached the very end of the boardwalk, which is basically an ode to the island’s past as a fishing town and home of a life-saving station. Here, in a glass case, is a giant, mounted tiger shark.

Finally! Something I knew something about. This, my father had taught me years earlier, was the largest fish ever caught in the state of Maryland. More than 1,200 pounds! There’s no way they couldn’t be impressed by this, right? I did my best impression of my dad, rattling off facts about how it was caught in 1983, how sharks like this fight for hours, and how we were looking at the royalty of Maryland fish.

The girls called it interesting and kept walking.

“Yeah, psych,” I muttered under my breath.

Here’s where I could blame my father for all of my past and future breakups with women, but I remember this as one of the few moments in my teenage existence that I realized he had a point. I’d spent the entire day moving about as much as that dead shark, waiting and worrying myself with life’s big questions —while at the beach . Meanwhile, Annie and Kelli had a fine time enjoying where they were—at the beach .

Related: 9 Tips to Stop Worrying

Within an hour or so we were back at the spot in the boardwalk between Paul Revere Smorgasbord and Sand Jesus. Annie and Kelli went back to their place and I went up the rickety elevator and opened the door to my family’s small room, which, all things considered, wasn’t half bad. My parents and brother were showered and ready. We went out for a big crab feast and my father offered me up for marriage to the waitress and I turned red and everybody laughed.

The next day, I rode waves all morning with Kenny. After that we went to the waterpark and slid down the big slide that went straight down like 12 times, and after that we went to the roller coaster and went upside down six times over and over again.

Then we got Thrasher’s fries and doused them in vinegar and salt. They tasted just like we remembered.

That fall, we grew up fast. I got assigned a red locker in the bomb shelter section of our high school, a holdover from the Cold War. That November, a bright, smiling 15-year-old sophomore girl died from “huffing,” or inhaling propane from a gas grill hose to get high. The Washington Post ran an in-depth story on how our school had become ground zero for kids seeking quick highs.

Reality Bites , the Winona Ryder-led movie that still serves as Hollywood’s definition of Generation X’s personality, came out the following February, but I didn’t watch it until years later. Two months after that, Kurt Cobain committed suicide. The older kids at school wore all black that week.

Pages turned more quickly after that, and in the spring of 2015, my parents moved to the coast of North Carolina, into a home they had built with wide doors and railings for my father, who needs a wheelchair to get around now. We’ve all been whipped in different ways since 1993—he’s had strokes and I’ve been divorced—but we get along.

I visited my parents out there on a Saturday this past August. That afternoon, we went to Wilmington, North Carolina, and set out for the Riverwalk, a less-traveled wooden walkway that runs along the Cape Fear River. I pushed Dad’s wheelchair over the boards. We ate a half-decent meal. I pushed him to the bathroom a few times and helped him keep his balance while he went. Then we went back to their house and I searched through old photos, looking for shots from those early years at Ocean City.

Of all the trips we took, from the years when I was a boy to the last trip in 2014 for Mom’s 63rd birthday, that 1993 trip produced the least amount of photographic evidence. But one picture stands out. In it, Dad, Kenny and I are walking north along the boardwalk. Judging from the relative size of the Ferris wheel and water slides in the background, it couldn’t have been far from the Plim Plaza and Paul Revere and Sand Jesus. Kenny’s in the background of the photo, fiddling with something in his hands. My father’s just ahead of Kenny, in between his two boys, and he’s walking.

If I had one wish now it would be to go back in time and tell that awkward boy he had every reason in the world to smile.

The shot catches him with one foot stepping in front of the other. It startled me, staring at that photo. It’s been a few years since we’ve seen Dad walk without the aid of a walker or a chair. I’m in the foreground of the picture, and if I had one wish now it would be to go back in time and tell that awkward boy he had every reason in the world to smile.

Related: 14 Loving Quotes About Family

This article originally appeared in the December 2016 issue of SUCCESS magazine .

Michael Graff

Michael Graff is the editor-in-chief of Charlotte Agenda . His work has appeared in publications around the country, and he's been a notable selection in Best American Essays and Best American Sports Writing . Reach him at [email protected] .

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Change — The Moment that Changed Everything: Personal Experience

The Moment that Changed Everything: Personal Experience

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Updated: 20 October, 2023

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Works Cited

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• Liu, Y., & Huang, Z. (2019). Why do people procrastinate? A review of six main theories. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1460.
• Luthans, F., & Youssef, C. M. (2007). Emerging positive organizational behavior. Journal of Management, 33(3), 321-349.
• Peterson, C. (2000). The future of optimism. American Psychologist, 55(1), 44-55.
• Scheier, M. F., & Carver, C. S. (1993). On the power of positive thinking: The benefits of being optimistic. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2(1), 26-30.
• Seligman, M. E. (2002). Authentic happiness: Using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment. Simon and Schuster.

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The Day My Life Changed

By: Stenly   •  Essay  •  1,468 Words  •  December 2, 2009  •  1,545 Views

Essay title: The Day My Life Changed

I stepped through the door to my grandmother and grandfather's home without even aknock. My grandpa looked up from the television he was watching, from his cozy comer chair.He had a head of snowy white hair gleaming in the room. Over his broad body, hung a navy bluedress shirt and a fuzzy cardigan sweater. He wore slacks, held up awkwardly by a belt, allowinghis small potbelly to hang over it. His face showed the years of worry and stress, and his whitebushy eyebrows and growing second chin showed his old age. His smile greeted me. As I drewclose to him, his aging arms reached out and wrapped around my body and pulled me into a warmloving hug. As he released me from the hug, I said, "Grandpa, I have some news I want you tohear" as I plopped down in the chair beside him. "I wanted to let you know that I am getting

married," I told him.The room was left in a dead silence, frozen for a brief period of time, as we recovered

from the intensity of the news I had brought him. Reaching for the remote to turn off the television, my grandfather looked at me.

Before he could say a word, the excitement of an unseen grandmother came from the kitchen.Both our eyes looked toward the cheerful light and the sounds of my grandmother's excitemen tAs the excitement faded away, his eyes turned toward mine. Awaiting his comments, my eyes

were open wide. Excitement had filled my body, because of the news I had just brought him."Wonderful, go ahead and tell me all about it," he exclaimed.Well, I woke up this morning just as I always do, but this time it was to the ringing of

the phone. I reached for the phone and said "Hello," and on the other end was my boyfriend. He said he needed to see me as soon as possible, so I said "OK," and went to meet him. When I arrived at his house, he met me at the door and asked me to come in and have a seat on the couch,

I was a little worried at this time. I sit down on the couch and he kneeled down in front of me on one knee, I just looked at him knowing now, what he was up to. This is what he said, "I know wehave been through a lot here lately, but I also kn ow that we can go through a lot more as long as

we do it together. So, since I have said that, "I want to ask you a question." And he reachedover to the dark brown oak end table beside him and picked up what looked to me like a small black box. He looked back at me and said 'Will you marry me,' as he opened the black box to

reveal an elegantly lavishing looking solitaire diamond ring engagement set. I didn't know what to say at first, I was just too stunned, so I got my bearings and I looked into his beautiful soft brown eyes and said the only thing I knew I could say, "Yes!" He grabbed me up by the waist and put

his arms around me, almost cutting me in half with his grip, and looked in my eyes and said,'You've made me the happiest man alive.' All I could do, because I was still stunned by theproposal, was just give him a big kiss on the lips and keep my arms around him as if to never let

go. When we finally broke apart and I sat back down on the couch, he took the ring from its small black box and placed it on my finger."We have not set a date just yet, but I know it will be soon and I will let you know as

soon as we do. I have to go now, because I have so many others to tell," I explained to mygrandparents. So I gave my grandfather and my grandmother a kiss on the cheek and headed outthe door. I stepped out of the warm house into the darkness and the chill of the night. The

evening breeze hit m y small body, sending shivers up my back. I instantaneously missed the warmfeeling of the house, heated by the blazing kitchen stove. I hurried down the hill toward thewarmth of my own house. As I walked the short distance, my eyes rested on the branches of the

many evergreen trees along the path. My mind focused on my proposal, and my life to come with

my fiancee. A smile formed on my face again, and the skip returned to my step. Opening the door to my house

the bright cheery light hit my face, I gleefully walked over to the phone and picked up the receiver and dialed. Waiting for the other end of the phone to be answered, my day ended just as it began,

on the phone.

once knew a medium height man weighing around one hundred and fifty pounds. His grey hair was easily taking over. His pale green eyes and sunbaked wrinkled face showed years of outdoor work. He was sixty-five and I call him grandfather. You could always count on a good conversation when you spoke with him. The years that he

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Essay on Incident That Changed My Life

Students are often asked to write an essay on Incident That Changed My Life in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Incident That Changed My Life

The day everything changed.

One sunny afternoon, I was out cycling when a dog ran onto the road. Swerving to avoid it, I fell and hurt my leg badly. This accident made me stay in bed for a month.

Learning and Growing

During that time, I read many books and discovered a love for stories. I also learned to appreciate the small things, like the warmth of sunlight or a phone call from a friend.

Because of this incident, I decided to start writing. I wanted to create stories that could make others feel less alone and more hopeful, just as those books did for me.

250 Words Essay on Incident That Changed My Life

One sunny afternoon, my life took a surprising turn. I was at the park, playing soccer with friends, when I noticed an old man sitting alone on a bench. He looked sad and forgotten. After the game, I felt a strong urge to talk to him. That decision marked a new chapter in my life.

A New Friend

I learned that the man’s name was Mr. Wilson. He told me stories of his youth and his love for painting. Mr. Wilson had no family nearby and felt very lonely. I was moved by his stories and decided to visit him every week. We became good friends, and I helped him with groceries and listened to his tales.

Lessons Learned

Through Mr. Wilson, I learned the value of kindness and the joy of giving time to others. He taught me that everyone has a story worth listening to and that sometimes the simplest act of kindness can brighten someone’s life.

A Changed Perspective

Meeting Mr. Wilson changed my outlook on life. I became more compassionate and started volunteering at a local community center. The happiness I saw in Mr. Wilson’s eyes whenever I visited him was the greatest reward. That chance encounter at the park showed me that one small gesture can make a big difference. It was an incident that transformed who I am and how I see the world.

500 Words Essay on Incident That Changed My Life

Life is like a river, always flowing and changing its course when least expected. I learned this lesson when an incident changed the direction of my life completely. It was an ordinary Saturday morning, and I was on my way to the local library. Little did I know that this walk would lead me to an experience that would transform my life.

A Surprising Encounter

As I was walking, I noticed a small, scared kitten hiding under a bush. Its eyes were wide with fear, and it was meowing softly. Without thinking much, I approached the kitten and gently picked it up. I looked around for its mother or any sign of where it came from, but there was none. I realized this little creature was alone and needed help. So, I decided to take it home, at least until I could find it a safe place to live.

A New Responsibility

Bringing the kitten home meant I had to learn how to take care of it. I named her Whiskers, and as days passed, I grew attached to her. I learned about feeding schedules, the importance of play, and regular visits to the vet. Whiskers became my responsibility, and I took that role seriously. This experience taught me about commitment and the joy of caring for another living being.

Taking care of Whiskers made me more responsible and empathetic. I started understanding the value of life, no matter how small. I also became more organized, as I had to balance my schoolwork with my new duties as a pet owner. My friends noticed the change in me, and I felt proud of the person I was becoming.

Sharing the Joy

I began to share my story with friends and classmates. Many were inspired by how a simple act of kindness could lead to such a positive change. My teachers also praised my actions and used my experience as an example in class to encourage others to be kind and responsible.

A Lasting Impact

The day I found Whiskers was the day my life took a new turn. I became more caring, responsible, and aware of the needs of others. This incident showed me that even a small gesture can have a big impact. It changed how I saw the world and how I interacted with it. I learned that life can be unpredictable, but it is these surprises that shape us and help us grow.

In conclusion, the incident with Whishers, the kitten, was a turning point in my life. It taught me valuable lessons and helped me develop into a better individual. It’s amazing how life can throw unexpected events our way, and it’s up to us to make the best of them. This experience will stay with me forever, reminding me of the day everything changed.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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Guest Essay

How the SAT Changed My Life

By Emi Nietfeld

Ms. Nietfeld is the author of the memoir “Acceptance.”

This month, the University of Texas, Austin, joined the wave of selective schools reversing Covid-era test-optional admissions policies, once again requiring applicants to submit ACT or SAT scores.

Many colleges have embraced the test-optional rule under the assumption that it bolsters equity and diversity, since higher scores are correlated with privilege. But it turns out that these policies harmed the teenagers they were supposed to help. Many low-income and minority applicants withheld scores that could have gotten them in, wrongly assuming that their scores were too low, according to an analysis by Dartmouth. More top universities are sure to join the reversal. This is a good thing.

I was one of the disadvantaged youths who are often failed by test-optional policies, striving to get into college while in foster care and homeless. We hear a lot about the efforts of these elite schools to attract diverse student bodies and about debates around the best way to assemble a class. What these conversations overlook is the hope these tests offer students who are in difficult situations.

For many of us, standardized tests provided our one shot to prove our potential, despite the obstacles in our lives or the untidy pasts we had. We found solace in the objectivity of a hard number and a process that — unlike many things in our lives — we could control. I will always feel tenderness toward the Scantron sheets that unlocked higher education and a better life.

Growing up, I fantasized about escaping the chaos of my family for the peace of a grassy quad. Both my parents had mental health issues. My adolescence was its own mess. Over two years I took a dozen psychiatric drugs while attending four different high school programs. At 14, I was sent to a locked facility where my education consisted of work sheets and reading aloud in an on-site classroom. In a life skills class, we learned how to get our G.E.D.s. My college dreams began to seem like delusions.

Then one afternoon a staff member handed me a library copy of “Barron’s Guide to the ACT .” I leafed through the onionskin pages and felt a thunderclap of possibility. I couldn’t go to the bathroom without permission, let alone take Advanced Placement Latin or play water polo or do something else that would impress elite colleges. But I could teach myself the years of math I’d missed while switching schools and improve my life in this one specific way.

After nine months in the institution, I entered foster care. I started my sophomore year at yet another high school, only to have my foster parents shuffle my course load at midyear, when they decided Advanced Placement classes were bad for me. In part because of academic instability like this, only 3 percent to 4 percent of former foster youth get a four-year college degree.

Later I bounced between friends’ sofas and the back seat of my rusty Corolla, using my new-to-me SAT prep book as a pillow. I had no idea when I’d next shower, but I could crack open practice problems and dip into a meditative trance. For those moments, everything was still, the terror of my daily life softened by the fantasy that my efforts might land me in a dorm room of my own, with endless hot water and an extra-long twin bed.

Standardized tests allowed me to look forward, even as every other part of college applications focused on the past. The song and dance of personal statements required me to demonstrate all the obstacles I’d overcome while I was still in the middle of them. When shilling my trauma left me gutted and raw, researching answer elimination strategies was a balm. I could focus on equations and readings, like the scholar I wanted to be, rather than the desperate teenager that I was.

Test-optional policies would have confounded me, but in the 2009-10 admissions cycle, I had to submit my scores; my fellow hopefuls and I were all in this together, slogging through multiple-choice questions until our backs ached and our eyes crossed.

The hope these exams instilled in me wasn’t abstract: It manifested in hundreds of glossy brochures. After I took the PSAT in my junior year, universities that had received my score flooded me with letters urging me to apply. For once, I felt wanted. These marketing materials informed me that the top universities offered generous financial aid that would allow me to attend free. I set my sights higher, despite my guidance counselor’s lack of faith.

When I took the actual SAT, I was ashamed of my score. Had submitting it been optional, I most likely wouldn’t have done it, because I suspected my score was lower than the prep-school applicants I was up against (exactly what Dartmouth found in the analysis that led it to reinstate testing requirements). When you grow up the way I did, it’s difficult to believe that you are ever good enough.

When I got into Harvard, it felt like a miracle splitting my life into a before and after. My exam preparation paid off on campus — it was the only reason I knew geometry or grammar — and it motivated me to tackle new, difficult topics. I majored in computer science, having never written a line of code. Though a career as a software engineer seemed far-fetched, I used my SAT study strategies to prepare for technical interviews (in which you’re given one or more problems to solve) that landed me the stable, lucrative Google job that catapulted me out of financial insecurity.

I’m not the only one who feels affection for these tests. At Harvard, I met other students who saw these exams as the one door they could unlock that opened into a new future. I was lucky that the tests offered me hope all along, that I could cling to the promise that one day I could bubble in a test form and find myself transported into a better life — the one I lead today.

Emi Nietfeld is the author of the memoir “ Acceptance .” Previously, she was a software engineer at Google and Facebook.

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