Undergraduate / "Buenos días, Madrid" - BATES Comment, [4]

In addition to the Common Application essay, please respond in two or three paragraphs to the following question:

* How will you, with your life experiences, contribute to the vitality of Bates?

Buenos días, Madrid. The city had not slept; it stood outside my window with a groggy expression, eyes blinking back the lights of disco techs. The clock read four ante meridiem. Two hours, I thought as I walked to the hotel lobby in pajamas, calculating the time that I would have to myself before my classmates awoke to tour streets that led to 15th century palaces. Pressing the on button on the computer, it hummed alive.

"Ciao, hola, 'ello!" They tried each language until they came across the right one, finally pulling my attention away from the computer with the strange, Spanish keyboard. It took a moment to readjust to the real world; to leave behind my imaginary place where women sang butterflies and oceans caught fire. I knew that someone had come inside. Whenever the hotel doors opened, the air spilled in, the scent of night still lingering; an interesting mixture of cigarettes and the spices that had rolled up from the Mediterranean, down from the Pyrenees. Their thick accents and the slur of their inebriation left me oblivious to the fact that they were talking to me, however, until their faces loomed above, peering at my secret world that trailed behind a blinking cursor.

"I'm an actor." One announced. He was dark skinned, a Roman. I squinted my tired eyes at him, seeing a gladiator in the Flavian Amphitheater, still confusing fact with fiction. "Can I read this dialogue?"

Just like that, an American and three traveling Italians were sharing a story before sunrise in a hotel lobby off of calle Gran Via, Spain. It was my story, but there was something in their voices which told it to me in a way that I had never before heard. My captivation was not unusual. I am often teased by the wisdom and insight that linger in another's voice during conversation; I want to bottle this quality of perspective, and then squeeze it out into my mind so that I can experience it, too. What would life be if we could know it through every eye; hazel and dark, blue and grey-if we could always trade secrets like this, making conversation in a room whose air is perfumed with the possibility of enlightenment? At Bates, I will discover the life in people I meet; be the oil for out-of-use facets of the mind, the polish for dusty soul-beauty, just like I did that day in Spain. I see myself sprawled out under the trees in front of Hathorn, the limbs above me holding flames and dripping gold, exactly as they were when I first visited campus. Around me are students, one from Taiwan and another who has pledged to take me to my first lacrosse match. Both have ideas spilling from their lips, in which I wade, and then splash some of my own back. I am content, but not because of a mere exchange of philosophies; this happens every day at Bates College, I have seen it. Instead, it is because ten minutes ago I did not know these two students-I was introduced by the boy with a bobcat on his tee, who is walking to get coffee in the room where we discussed the merits of our own existence and terrorism in India yesterday. The vitality of Bates cannot be overlooked; it paves the sidewalks and adorns the buildings there, but the students can manifest the spirit of the school by sharing who they are with one another, by giving simply because one person can never acquire all that life has to offer on their own. I would do that.