cballard93
Nov 27, 2010
Undergraduate / "From inauspicious beginnings" - common app [5]
this is what I am thinking for the common app essay. this is just a rough draft and i know that my grammar is terrible. any help will be well appreciated. Also the ending dosnt seem right to me, any ideas on that.
"From inauspicious beginnings"
It was the end of the 5th Grade graduation ceremony, and all the recent graduates were standing in a circle talking and laughing. A friend of mine, Josh, told everybody to watch him "do a trick". What he did next was so incredible that it instantly made him the coolest kid in 5th grade. He slowly took out three tennis balls and began to juggle. I was awestruck, unable to contain myself. When I got home later that day I told everybody that in no uncertain terms that I was going to teach myself to juggle. At my disposal I had: a baseball, a tennis ball, and a hacky sack. With these I was determined to enter middle school with the most amazing skill I had ever seen. I quickly realized that I had no idea how to juggle; I did not even know where to start.
I tried to juggle two balls in one hand. I was met with less than perfect results. Later, I figured I would just throw all three balls in the air at once and see what would happen. That was an even worse failure. Little did I know that in order to learn to juggle I had to execute each throw and catch one at a time to get the pattern down. I realized that by the start of the third week of practicing. Then, during the fourth week of practice I finally did it, I completed two full cycles. I was finally able to juggle, but that was not enough for me I wanted to impress my friends even more than Josh did at the 5th grade graduation. After being a successful three ball juggler I decided that I would take the next step. I would do a trick.
With the constant pestering of my friends to "come out and play", I began to practice my first trick, mills' mess. It was possibly the most difficult thing I have ever tried. The whole endeavor took four long weeks of dropping the balls over and over again ad nauseam. When I finally completed the trick I told my friend I had something cool to show them when we all got to school. I gathered my friends around the flag pole and initiated mills' mess. Rather than being met with awestruck gazes and stunned silence followed by uproarious applause, I was presented with either looks of disappointment or the "we're laughing at you not with you" kind of laughing. I was perplexed as to why this did not work for me when it worked so well for Josh just a few months earlier.
I never got my answer, but I did not really care very much. All I knew was that, although I never got superstar status in middle school for my feats of juggling prowess, I did however develop a new hobby. I also learned that, although cliché, "The Destination is not Important. It's the Journey that Counts.". Even after the flagpole incident I continue to juggle to this very day because I remember not the embarrassment but, the fun I had trying to overcome a challenge that may seem silly to you, but was of the utmost importance to me.
any ideas would help immensely. Thankyou
this is what I am thinking for the common app essay. this is just a rough draft and i know that my grammar is terrible. any help will be well appreciated. Also the ending dosnt seem right to me, any ideas on that.
"From inauspicious beginnings"
It was the end of the 5th Grade graduation ceremony, and all the recent graduates were standing in a circle talking and laughing. A friend of mine, Josh, told everybody to watch him "do a trick". What he did next was so incredible that it instantly made him the coolest kid in 5th grade. He slowly took out three tennis balls and began to juggle. I was awestruck, unable to contain myself. When I got home later that day I told everybody that in no uncertain terms that I was going to teach myself to juggle. At my disposal I had: a baseball, a tennis ball, and a hacky sack. With these I was determined to enter middle school with the most amazing skill I had ever seen. I quickly realized that I had no idea how to juggle; I did not even know where to start.
I tried to juggle two balls in one hand. I was met with less than perfect results. Later, I figured I would just throw all three balls in the air at once and see what would happen. That was an even worse failure. Little did I know that in order to learn to juggle I had to execute each throw and catch one at a time to get the pattern down. I realized that by the start of the third week of practicing. Then, during the fourth week of practice I finally did it, I completed two full cycles. I was finally able to juggle, but that was not enough for me I wanted to impress my friends even more than Josh did at the 5th grade graduation. After being a successful three ball juggler I decided that I would take the next step. I would do a trick.
With the constant pestering of my friends to "come out and play", I began to practice my first trick, mills' mess. It was possibly the most difficult thing I have ever tried. The whole endeavor took four long weeks of dropping the balls over and over again ad nauseam. When I finally completed the trick I told my friend I had something cool to show them when we all got to school. I gathered my friends around the flag pole and initiated mills' mess. Rather than being met with awestruck gazes and stunned silence followed by uproarious applause, I was presented with either looks of disappointment or the "we're laughing at you not with you" kind of laughing. I was perplexed as to why this did not work for me when it worked so well for Josh just a few months earlier.
I never got my answer, but I did not really care very much. All I knew was that, although I never got superstar status in middle school for my feats of juggling prowess, I did however develop a new hobby. I also learned that, although cliché, "The Destination is not Important. It's the Journey that Counts.". Even after the flagpole incident I continue to juggle to this very day because I remember not the embarrassment but, the fun I had trying to overcome a challenge that may seem silly to you, but was of the utmost importance to me.
any ideas would help immensely. Thankyou