opinions on my essay?

Hi I'm applying to IU Bloomington for marketing. Is my essay decent? I've been told that it's too generic but is the content unique enough? I understand it's not the strongest essay. The rest of my application is well qualified for general admit, less likely for direct admit.

For most of my life, I have been the shortest person in the room. In classrooms, crowded halls, and nights out, I have always been aware of how easily people make assumptions based on what they see. At first, I went to bed every night thinking it was unfair. People treated me as less capable, weaker, or discredited me simply because of something I could not control. But over time, I began to understand more about these judgements, and how they reflected a larger truth about how society perceives people.

Being short showed me first hand how perception rules your thinking. I started noticing how quickly we categorize others by appearance, speech, or behavior. These judgments happen instantly, almost automatically, because we are conditioned to think this way. From early childhood, we absorb unspoken norms about what success, beauty, and intelligence should look like. Success is money and confidence, while beauty is skinny and symmetrical. Strength is having large muscles, and intelligence is measured by how well you’ve studied a textbook. These patterns of belief shape how we interpret reality, often without our awareness. Once I recognized this conditioning, I began to question it. Why do we treat confidence as competence? Why do we see silence as weakness? In reality, quiet does not have to be weak, and confidence has its limits. I started noticing how these assumptions influence everything from friendships to opportunities. It became clear that we often see others not as they are, but as our environment has taught us to see them.

A moment that crystallized this came during a group project when I met a new student who rarely spoke. I assumed he was someone who didn’t care about school, someone who would skip classes, but later discovered he was new to the country and still learning English. That small realization was humbling. It made me confront my own biases and recognize how easily perception can distort truth. Since then, I have tried to approach people differently in my mind. When someone acts rude towards me, I think about the experiences that might have led them to act this way. When someone withdraws, I consider what expectations might be silencing them. I realized that every person carries invisible influences—family, culture, fear, income, and experience—that form their worldview.

Through this awareness, I learned that empathy is not simply agreeing or relating, but understanding. It requires us to step outside the boundaries of our conditioning and try to see through perspectives not familiar to our own. Most conflict I’ve seen in my life arises not from genuine malice, but from limited awareness. Modern life makes it even harder to create headspace. Social media, constant news, and endless noise result in less reflection, and more reaction. I believe the ability to pause and question those influences is what defines genuine consciousness.

I may still be the shortest person in most rooms, but I now see it doesn’t make me less of a person than anyone there. It has become a reminder of how perception creates our understanding, and how awareness can free us from rigid perspectives. True growth begins not when we change how we appear, but when we change how we see.