Undergraduate /
Common app essay : embarrasing time (Do I answer the prompt? feedback) crit back [15]
Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Thanks guys, I will crit back.I hate Mark Twain. It is not so much him as an individual I strongly dislike, but rather his inventions. One particular invention called the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn gave me the worst possible time a teenage boy could ever have.
When my teachers began assigning projects to torture my classmates one last time before the summer, I started, quite literally, cavorting around the classroom. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not the type to win over a teacher's affection by expressing an implausible amount of geniality. Nope, I genuinely loved projects. I loved the idea of turning an idea from my brain into an actual observable object.
Naturally, when my AP Language teacher assigned our class a Huckleberry Finn project of our choice, I folded my hands into a fist, slammed the fist on my oak desk and said, "Yes!" (not quite so audibly). Eager to work, I joined my group mates in a member's house. After many hours of work filled with honest Youtube-ing, Google-ing, and soul-searching, we decided upon a parody. It would be a ten-minute parody, totally revamped and full of energy. This was Tuesday. Our presentation? Friday.
When we met on Wednesday, however, the situation had gone from amazing to horrible. It seems sometime during the time interval between sleep, getting ready for school, and attending school, the two male and the three female members of my group had met together and voted unanimously on the idea of a musical. So much for democracy, right? Fairness aside, I had to find a way to pinch the nub before it got too wild. I decided to follow the teachings of Machiavelli and prepared myself to use any cunning move necessary to carry out my mission. When my group mates, or rather, my betrayers brought it to show themselves to the next meeting, I immediately called them out on the musical idea. I turned to one girl and said, "But I dance like a caterpillar. You know that! You saw me at the winter formal". She nodded. Encouraged I turned to another boy and said, "I sing like a troll. You know that! You were there at the Ritmo Latino(an annual singing and dancing show)". At this point, my group members stood up and rejected all of my "excuses", they called it.
I was not going to give up. Taking into the account of the principle "United We Stand", I created a scheme to approach individual group members where they would not have the support of the whole group. When verbal dialogue failed, I retorted to blatant bargaining strategies. To name a few, carrying their books, and buying them a lunch or two were both part of my arsenal of chicaneries.
By the end of Thursday, however, I knew I had been defeated. My clever subterfuge was over. I touted, I pouted and in the end, my group mates stood together like a wall defending their musical idea from the onslaught of my tricks. After having dinner in Taco Bell at 11 PM, my group mates went back to the house to practice. We ran through the skit like the previous two times but this time I croaked to our version of the Pokemon theme song, and moved my legs to Elvis Jailhouse Rock-quite observably if I might add. Even more amazing was the fact that I felt absolutely no inhibitions. It was a dream come true for both me and my group members.
I felt so overjoyed that I started skipping around the living room. I went so far as confiding in my group members the true reason for my refusal to do a musical. At the time, it had felt so special. It had felt so right to confide that the reason for me cynical was simply the fact that I was scared about performing. I promised them that I would perform flawlessly tomorrow morning. I printed out a copy of the skit and left for home.
Confident-me came with an expiration date. When I got home, I tiptoed to my room, sat on the desk, and slammed my forehead upon it. The embarrassment had arrived later than expected. It failed to show up when my group mates and I were rehearsing, but it did keep its promise because it had finally showed up to harass me. The cruelty of the situation was that it was so final. With my own actions, I had put myself in a jail because I could not go against the promise I had made to my groupmates. I needed to find a way to erase my inhibitions. In the crux of it all, I found the key. If I could only pass through the door, I would be erased of my inhibitions. When I discovered the key, I was not shocked at my discovery. Instead, I was amazed at the simplicity of it.
Taking the script along with me, I ran to the bathroom and locked the doors. Determined I told myself that the bathroom would be my jail. The only way I could get out of this jail, I convinced myself, was to force myself to run through the skit flawlessly. Script in one hand, I did my dialogue with no problem. When it came time to perform the Pokemon theme song, I kept eye contact with my reflection on the mirror while silently singing the song outloud. The sight did not look so bad after all. When I came out the bathroom nearly two hours later, my Jailhouse Rock moves was comparable to Elvis himself.
Although we performed for only a classroom size of thirty-six, the knowledge of that performance had been known to nearly every member of the junior class. My teacher personally congratulated me at the end of performance and told me she said never seen anything like it. Rumor has it that college is difficult and beyond anyone's total control but I know that I have a bathroom or any other tightly closed space where I can go in and come out emboldened to face whatever uneasy situation blocks my path.
