Undergraduate / 'The world is upside down' - dance common app extracurricular essay [8]

hey everyone. This is my common app extracurricular essay. please help me improve it. i have a great passion for dance but its really hard to show in such a small word count. i think its a bit off. what do you think? Any advice is more than welcome. also, i need to reduce the word count. so any help will be appreciated. thanks in advance :)

The world is upside down. A pair of feet is all I can see from the corner of my eyes. The pain in my arms has made them numb but I refuse to give up. I slowly and carefully turn my gaze towards the mirror placed in front of me, trying my best not to lose balance. As I look at myself, I realize that I am doing it. I have done it. I have finally learned the posture of baby freeze and am now standing on my head.

Dancing has always taken me to a state of euphoria; to a state where I can connect with myself, learn who I am and remember where I come from. In every stage of my life, I have danced and I have learned more about myself through it. As a kid, I learned the classical form, which helped me understand the god I worshiped everyday without knowing of his existence. Through middle school, I learned various ethnic dances which allowed me to learn about the different ethnicities in my country, including my own. Belly dancing, which I learned by myself through repeated viewing of videos, helped me get in touch with my femininity as a girl transforming into a woman.

Today, I am learning the b-boying form which requires great strength and stamina. With my fragile figure, most had said I would not be able to do it. But as I started learning, my own strength astounded me. Yet again, this form has familiarized me with my strength and taught me to never underestimate myself.

Dance has always been a companion to me through my happiness and sorrow, pride and insecurity, physicality and spirituality and I believe it will continue introducing me to many other sides of me that I have yet to know.

Undergraduate / Sibling insecurity and much more -Common App/ Application essay [13]

hey guys. this is my common app application essay. Please give me any feedback or advice. Please be harsh. is it unique? or do i sound like another whiny teenager? do i come off as trying to gain sympathy?too much material? style? lacking is something? ANYTHING!!! it is not final and i can still change it so any advice is welcome. kudos :)

After 18 years, my parents have had another child - a boy. While the measure of everyone's joy at this event seems infinite, I cannot help but wonder, was I not good enough?

I have always believed that one of the reasons I grew up to be a feminist is my parents. They raised me as an only child until the age of 12, after which they had another daughter who drove away the solitude I had always felt. Throughout my life I watched them disregard every tantrum from the society for not having a son, which led me to assume I was as good as one. I spent all of my time trying to gratify my parents; trying to gather their approval. I have been obedient, respectful, understanding and academically forward. I have been a source of pride to my parents at many occasions and have always dreamt of supporting them during their old days. Today, the dream is still the same; the difference is that I envision their son doing it instead of me.

To someone viewing this situation, it may look like another instance of sibling insecurity. But for me, it is much more. Having been raised in a society where wives are physically and verbally abused in every other home; where daughters are disowned for being engaged in love affairs; where children are always asked to pray for brothers and never for sisters; where people have as many as 12 daughters in hope of having a son and then refuse to educate all of them because they do not have the required source of finance, I always felt blessed to have parents who were not misogynists like most in my society. But today, I feel like I was wrong all along. I wonder, could my parents be one of those I recently criticized as being misogynists?

I understand that they have the right to bear as many children as they desire. However, the fact that if my sister or I were of the opposite sex, they probably would not have found the need to have another child, neglecting the unfavorable financial circumstances we are in, makes me feel worthless. My existence does not seem to hold any value to neither my society nor my parents.

As a child, I was also a subject to ethnic discrimination and bullying in my school. Back then, I did not know that it was wrong and always thought that I was the one carrying the defect. But not this time. I refuse to be treated differently for something that is a part of me that I do not have the power to change. Unlike my society, I know that my existence holds a reason and now, I have found it. Sexism is a disease, one of the mind that I cannot treat with my knowledge in genetics. However, I will bring a change to the mindset of people towards women in any possible way I can.

I may forgive my parents for the pain that they have caused me, the insecurities I have felt, the doubts I have had about myself, but I cannot forgive them, as a woman, for thinking I wasn't good enough.

Undergraduate / The Apple Incident; Common app [5]

hey everyone. this is one of the few application essays i've written. can you take a look at it and provide me with feedback? This is slightly light and fun than my other essays. I need feedback to choose the best one. note that this is exceeding the word limit, so if you could also help me with that, it would be great :D

The apple incident
As I stood on my seat, I could see all the eyes that were judging me for the misdemeanor I had conducted. The teachers were looking at me with disdain. "Why are they all looking at only me?", I thought and looked beside me and to my dissappointment , my friend was still in her seat.

The incident took place when I was in my sophomore year in high school. We really wanted to attend a singing competition that was being held in our school but because of the big size of the student body in our school, only half of us were taken to see the competition. My friends planned to sneak out of class to watch it but I was very sure that if we just asked the teachers to let us go, they would. I was wrong. Not only did they turn us down, they accompanied us to our class so that we would not sneak away. All my friends were furious at me for having suggested that we ask the teachers.

With glum, we sat in class and attended the boring lecture with all of our attention to the little bit of what could be heard of the singing competition that took place more than a 100 feet away. My best friend, who sat next to me was the most angry. I was trying to calm her down while pretending to be listening to the lecture when she suddenly found a half bitten apple and threw it across class rather impulsively. To make matters worse, it flew and landed right on the shoulder of the teacher.

We were both terrified. I knew that is not where she aimed her throw, but who would believe us? In a matter of minutes, our class teacher was in the class with the lecturer and they were interrogating us. "Who did this?", they would ask with scorn in their voices and no one would respond. I whispered to my friends that she should stand up and nothing would happen but she already knew where my suggestions had taken her before. The lecturer threatened us stating that if someone does not own up, he would never teach us again. My friend then made me an offer. She asked me to stand up with her. I knew she was scared and could never do it alone, so I agreed. We agreed to count to 3 and stand up at once. 1, 2, 3... I was up. She was not. After taking a moment to realize what I had done, I looked at her and with a sense of guilt, she stood up. We were taken to the teacher's lounge and threatened to be suspended without anyone even hearing our story. "Suspension", a teacher would call, "restigation" the other would improvise. After some time my friend took the blame on herself and the matter was resolved only by having a talk with our parents.

Many know of this story in my school now. Many respond to it by calling me foolish for taking the blame for something I had not done. Teachers mostly would say that its nice to be faithful to your friends but it is not good to support them in wrong doing. But what they do not understand is, I was not just being loyal to a friend. I was doing the right thing. If I had refused to stand up with her, she would not have stood up at all, which would have made the whole class suffer. I was doing the right thing because I was making someone admit the truth. If I had refused, the she would never have owned up to it. If I complained about her, she could have easily refused. What I did is make her act truthful. People can think otherwise of my act, but I do not mind being characterized negatively as long as I know what I am doing is right.