Excerpt from Nina Flies Away
Marie Devers

(1) Nina was surprised. (2) She had never pondered all of the unique things in her life that had prepared her for college—not until she wrote her college admissions essay. (3) In her prose, she described how her experiences had strengthened her spirit. (4) Helping my cousin clean salmon for a communal stew, she had written, taught me that each person and animal plays an important role in the success of a village.

Read this paragraph. Which statement, if used to replace sentence 1, improves the paragraph?
A) Nina loved writing about her friends in her personal journal.
B) Nina realized new things about herself and her life in the village.
C) Nina wanted nothing more than to leave the village and begin college.
D) Nina was a good student, but her writing was not good enough for college.