Hello everyone, I'm finshing up my three part film and television portfolio (finally) and I've finished everything but this dramatic essay. This is my first draft and its far from perfect. it also isnt totally finished, but am i on the right track at least? ill check grammar and edit diction and stuff later, but are the ideas ok? honest opinions please. thanks!

this is the prompt: Introduce yourself. Describe an unforgettable event in your life and how it changed your perception of yourself or the view of someone close to you. This event can be dramatic and/or comedic. The assignment may be written as a short story in the first person or as an essay

Having lived in Carmel, California since the beginning of pre-school, I was never the new kid in school, and nothing made me appreciate that more than seeing the three of four children who nobody recognized take a seat on the first day of a new school year. The teacher’s attempt to introduce these kids to the class by having everybody state their name and favorite hobby only amplified the awkwardness of being surrounded by unfamiliarity. I never take it for granted when I am able to reminisce with friends about the time in second grade when Justin fed Play-Doh to the goldfish or when Kyle brought me to the nurse after I fell off the monkey bars. I’ve known most of my friends since kindergarten, and although we’ve drifted somewhat into different cliques, we still share strong friendships that have lasted over a decade.
Because I’ve always had this comfortable niche in Monterey, I panicked when my mom told me in the first grade that my twin brother Nathan and I would be going to Japan to attend school for four weeks. How was I going to survive in a different school let alone in a new country? At the time, I was able to speak Japanese well enough to get by, but with a funny accent and an inability to write in most forms of Japanese, I figured these kids were going to rip me apart. I had visited Japan a few times before, but I was never far from my mother’s side. Never had I been put into a situation where I had to adapt, and being dropped off in a foreign environment was a nightmarish concept.
Regardless of my desire to stay home in the city I knew so well, I woke up in Japan a few weeks later to begin what I thought would be the most uncomfortable day of my life. Everything there was different. The school was five stories tall, something I’d never seen in an American school, and I was required to remove my shoes and put on slippers before entering the building. The agony continued to build as Nathan and I searched for our classroom amidst echoes of foreign chatter in the hallways.
We reached our classroom, hesitating just a second before knocking on the door. A student came to let us in as the rest of the class turned around. As I struggled to avoid any eye contact, a chalkboard at the front of the classroom caught my attention. In bright, colorful writing, the board read, “Welcome, Michael and Nathan!” It was written in the simplest form of Japanese, and this warm gesture was the last thing I expected from a group of strangers. Of course, I was reminded of how forced I always felt when I had to state my name and favorite hobby in America, and I figured this could just be the same type of custom Japan used to make new kids feel accepted. However, when I sat down, students were eager to sit next to me as opposed to desperate to get as far away from me as possible.
The first thing on the schedule for this day was swimming, and the fact that an elementary school had a massive swimming pool came as an unfortunate surprise. I feared that everybody would make fun of me when they found out I couldn’t swim with my face under water, and to add to this stress, I soon learned that every student had to go through a strange “initiation” to be admitted to the pool. We were required to sit on the ground for thirty seconds as hoses sprayed us with freezing water from every direction. I was one of the last in line, and as I sat on the hard ground, waiting for the tears and embarrassment to ensue, a student came and sat beside me. He started counting down from thirty, and he calmly told me to count with him. The swimming pool initiation was soon over, and this boy’s benevolent action made me feel guilty for ever thinking these children would treat me unfairly. I immediately told him I couldn’t swim well, knowing full well that he would understand. Without so much as a chuckle, he told me he would stay in the shallow end of the pool with me. I wondered why this boy was being so compassionate to me, a stranger, when he had plenty of friends he could be swimming with. Soon, the rest of my new classmates came to join my new friend and I, and after some friendly arm-twisting, they all helped me swim to the deep end and back, applauding me the entire way.
All of a sudden I felt like a celebrity. Students were voluntarily helping me with my class work, fighting to be on my team in soccer, and vying for my company in general. All my stressing of the names they I would be called, the isolation I would experience, and the bullying I would have to deal with had been for naught. I soon found it hard to believe that I ever dreaded going to school in Japan. After the first day there, I never wanted to leave! It became obvious to me that new experiences provide incredible opportunities, and without my mother forcing me to attend school in Japan, I would have missed out on one of my most cherished memories. Because of that experience, I have become enthusiastically willing to immerse myself in unfamiliar environments. Although not all kids are as friendly as the boy who helped me through the swimming pool initiation, the pessimistic attitude I had going into this experience was never going to benefit me.