jchevallier
Sep 19, 2009
Undergraduate / "Two cultures" - STANFORD COMMON APP ESSAY [2]
Devouring mom's homemade apple pie, scarfing down cotton candy at the State fair, barbequing for the fourth of July, dyeing eggs unusual colors at Easter time, soaring a kite high in the blue sky on a clear afternoon- these are the memories that virtually every average American kid treasures. Yet, I remember scampering through fields of lavender, my long, brown hair trying to keep up with me and my gay laughter drifting out far in front of me. Instead of apple pies and barbeques, my memories are filled with quiches, potatoes au gratin, and crepes. I remember sitting at a long table in the cool, summer breeze while all my relatives palavered boisterously and simultaneously in a language distinct from the one my schoolteacher used in class. I remember my mother singing to me in a tongue that no one outside of my family uttered but it made me feel most at home. It's the idiom that has connected me strongly to my heritage and reminded me that I wouldn't have the memories of an average American kid. Those are the memories I've come to cherish. These recollections and this language have allowed me to experience two cultures simultaneously; French and American.
My particular heritage won me a lot of interest from people for most of my childhood. As I continued my schooling, however, things suddenly changed. In May 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and called upon their allies to aid them in the inevitable war. France was among the countries asked to invade Iraq alongside the United States army. When the French refused, a strange reaction broke out in some parts of America. The people who were once so fascinated by my French background were beginning to use it for ridicule. They started to call me a "coward" because I was French and I heard people making chicken noises as I walked past them in the hall. I'd go to my daily religion class and hear of how all French people are cowards who retreat at the first opportunity. I'd stroll into the school cafeteria to find the lunch menu that had included "French fries" and "French toast" the day before was replaced with a menacing list that contained "freedom fries" and "freedom toast", imitating the same menu change congress had recently made. In those moments, I could've rejected my French citizenship and joined in with the popular mockery of my people. But the truth was I was proud of being French. I was proud of all those days in my childhood that were spent in a distant land across the sea. I was proud of who I was and where I'd come from. Instead of trying to hide my heritage, I embraced it completely by showing them that French cowardice wasn't as common as they had thought it to be. I enlightened them to the fact that France had won many wars and I was able to help some of my fellow classmates understand that a culture shouldn't be scorned for a simple political decision.
After these experiences, I began to identify myself strongly with my French background and to explore how I illustrated my culture. I learned that French people are especially known for believing they're based on logic and reason, yet they're essentially driven by emotion. As I continued to discover what being French meant to me, my parents enlightened me to this French stereotype that I exemplify. I have a very logical mind that enjoys exploring math and logic. The emotional gibberish of metaphors in English never sparked my interest like the complicated, yet rational, theorems found in mathematics. I lead myself to believe that I was driven by pure reason and that emotion played no role in the way I lived my life, though it was not entirely true. Upon talking to my parents, it became suddenly clear that I am, in fact, driven by passion, though I had insisted on telling myself that I was motivated entirely by logic. More than ever, I understood that I'm deeply rooted in two cultures; although I was raised and taught to live like an American, I could not hide the fact that I, myself, am a woman of France at heart.
Now, every day, I live my life as a person that embodies these two cultures. I've been given the wonderful gift of being from two distinct cultures and, with it, I'm now given the challenge of being an exemplar of both. I can bring something new to the world by being a representative of my two heritages: by being neither wholly American nor entirely French. Through my experiences, I've been able to simultaneously be an insider and an outsider in this country, which has endowed me with certain advantages. I've come to not take the world at face value, but as a place where some things are broken and call for mending. I know that I have an innate sense to help change mankind. I also know that I want to change the way mankind interacts with the world. I'm looking to college to help me understand how to turn our environmental situation around and to show me if my way to change the world is through environmental engineering, as I believe it is now. Most of all, I know that college will give me the tools to go and make a distinctive difference in peoples' lives through my dual heritage that has shaped who I am and enabled me with something different to give back to my college and to the world.
Devouring mom's homemade apple pie, scarfing down cotton candy at the State fair, barbequing for the fourth of July, dyeing eggs unusual colors at Easter time, soaring a kite high in the blue sky on a clear afternoon- these are the memories that virtually every average American kid treasures. Yet, I remember scampering through fields of lavender, my long, brown hair trying to keep up with me and my gay laughter drifting out far in front of me. Instead of apple pies and barbeques, my memories are filled with quiches, potatoes au gratin, and crepes. I remember sitting at a long table in the cool, summer breeze while all my relatives palavered boisterously and simultaneously in a language distinct from the one my schoolteacher used in class. I remember my mother singing to me in a tongue that no one outside of my family uttered but it made me feel most at home. It's the idiom that has connected me strongly to my heritage and reminded me that I wouldn't have the memories of an average American kid. Those are the memories I've come to cherish. These recollections and this language have allowed me to experience two cultures simultaneously; French and American.
My particular heritage won me a lot of interest from people for most of my childhood. As I continued my schooling, however, things suddenly changed. In May 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and called upon their allies to aid them in the inevitable war. France was among the countries asked to invade Iraq alongside the United States army. When the French refused, a strange reaction broke out in some parts of America. The people who were once so fascinated by my French background were beginning to use it for ridicule. They started to call me a "coward" because I was French and I heard people making chicken noises as I walked past them in the hall. I'd go to my daily religion class and hear of how all French people are cowards who retreat at the first opportunity. I'd stroll into the school cafeteria to find the lunch menu that had included "French fries" and "French toast" the day before was replaced with a menacing list that contained "freedom fries" and "freedom toast", imitating the same menu change congress had recently made. In those moments, I could've rejected my French citizenship and joined in with the popular mockery of my people. But the truth was I was proud of being French. I was proud of all those days in my childhood that were spent in a distant land across the sea. I was proud of who I was and where I'd come from. Instead of trying to hide my heritage, I embraced it completely by showing them that French cowardice wasn't as common as they had thought it to be. I enlightened them to the fact that France had won many wars and I was able to help some of my fellow classmates understand that a culture shouldn't be scorned for a simple political decision.
After these experiences, I began to identify myself strongly with my French background and to explore how I illustrated my culture. I learned that French people are especially known for believing they're based on logic and reason, yet they're essentially driven by emotion. As I continued to discover what being French meant to me, my parents enlightened me to this French stereotype that I exemplify. I have a very logical mind that enjoys exploring math and logic. The emotional gibberish of metaphors in English never sparked my interest like the complicated, yet rational, theorems found in mathematics. I lead myself to believe that I was driven by pure reason and that emotion played no role in the way I lived my life, though it was not entirely true. Upon talking to my parents, it became suddenly clear that I am, in fact, driven by passion, though I had insisted on telling myself that I was motivated entirely by logic. More than ever, I understood that I'm deeply rooted in two cultures; although I was raised and taught to live like an American, I could not hide the fact that I, myself, am a woman of France at heart.
Now, every day, I live my life as a person that embodies these two cultures. I've been given the wonderful gift of being from two distinct cultures and, with it, I'm now given the challenge of being an exemplar of both. I can bring something new to the world by being a representative of my two heritages: by being neither wholly American nor entirely French. Through my experiences, I've been able to simultaneously be an insider and an outsider in this country, which has endowed me with certain advantages. I've come to not take the world at face value, but as a place where some things are broken and call for mending. I know that I have an innate sense to help change mankind. I also know that I want to change the way mankind interacts with the world. I'm looking to college to help me understand how to turn our environmental situation around and to show me if my way to change the world is through environmental engineering, as I believe it is now. Most of all, I know that college will give me the tools to go and make a distinctive difference in peoples' lives through my dual heritage that has shaped who I am and enabled me with something different to give back to my college and to the world.