• My mother and I have a complicated relationship; she always showed love in practical ways. • Although you aren't supposed to center other people in your college essays, I wrote about my mother. • Admissions officers at Yale and Stanford both said they were moved by what I wrote.

"Promise me you'll never put me in a nursing home," my mother often says.

Since I was 12, my answer has remained the same: "Of course not."

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.

Working through di

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