Undergraduate / Johns Hopkins- Conveying Emotion Through Music [3]

Prompt :Tell us something about yourself or your interests that we wouldn't learn by looking at the rest of your application materials. (While you should still pay attention to sentence structure and grammar, your response is meant as a way for us to get to know you, rather than a formal essay.)

"Your instruments act as your pen, your choice of notes and chords act as your words and anyone willing to listen as your paper. " These are the words a young blues musician bestowed on to me in New York City's Iridium Jazz Club. The words not only spurred my ever lasting interest in music but my wanting to convey emotion through my music.

When I began writing music it was a mean to convey any past experiences in the form of song. I amalgamated stories of hardship, serenity, joy and profit in the form of accented drum fills, rumbling bass rhythms, simple chord progressions and elongated guitar bends.

For example I attended my cousin's wedding. There was dancing, laughter and it was overall joyous atmosphere. I went home that night and wrote a song the followed the details of what happened. I used fast pace drum fills to reflect dancing that happened at the wedding, a synthesizer to recreate the same joyous atmosphere I felt in the wedding, and strummed major chords on to my guitar to reflect the happiness I felt there. I showed the song to my cousin and her husband and they understood what I tried to convey a time of celebration.

Creating music to me is like writing in a journal for the world to read. All my struggles are there, all my prosperities are there and everything details what I have done and been through.

Word count:243

Undergraduate / 'a semester on Biomedical Ethics' - Hopkins Supplement-Why I Enjoy Moral Philosophy [5]

Prompt: Johns Hopkins offers 50 majors across the schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering. On this application, we ask you to identify one or two that you might like to pursue here. Why did you choose the way you did? If you are undecided, why didn't you choose? (If any past courses or academic experiences influenced your decision, you may include them in your essay.)

What is the right thing to do? A simple question, yet one needs to think very hard to find an answer; that is, if an answer even exists. Moral philosophy invokes people to think and discern between two dichotomies, right and wrong. I was first introduced to this normative ethic, the study of differentiating right from wrong, in my junior year of high school when I took a semester on Biomedical Ethics.

In this class, I was asked to consider situations in which the right choice could, in fact, be wrong. One of my peers asked the question "Is it wrong for someone to kill an ailing person only to use that person's organs to save another?" I personally believe that in human dignity we are not allowed to use a person as a mean for another end. When I asked my teacher "what is the right thing to do?" I did not receive an answer because there wasn't one. My teacher told me to think about the situation, understand it, question any variables that might may contribute for the person to obtain the organs and finally reason why killing the ailing person is justifiable or wrong. This is why I enjoy philosophy. The simple task of finding right and from wrong turns into a an argument of why one outcome overrules another. When learning philosophy I keep an open mind to all the possibilities, there are to make a decision and not subject myself to simply saying that killing the ailing person is right or wrong but to ask why it is right or wrong.

Philosophy is abstract. One cannot subject themselves in to rigid thinking .Philosophy asks one to question, understand critically think, and reason. Through philosophy I hope I can better understand the ethical situations with which we as human beings are faced with and find reason as to why our decisions are right and or wrong.

How do I condense the supplement from 320 words to 250

Undergraduate / 'The California coast line' - Help me with the common app essay- Opening paragraph [2]

It was the perfect moment. The sun was setting off the California coast line. The summer breeze pushed my hair out of my eyes. I could finally see all the surfers were returning to dry land. However I was still waiting, waiting for that last perfect wave. Then I saw it, the last wave I would ride in that summer. I paddled my surfboard towards the wave with my exhausted arms and legs and then I stood up and rode it. The ocean mist sprayed me in the face and the force of the wave pushed up from under me. I was finally surfing. In that moment it felt as though all the problems I had, all the thoughts that were acclimating seconds ago had deviated away from me. It was just me and the water. I was in a state of euphoria.

Undergraduate / 'love of classical music' - Common App Topic of your choice [2]

The moment was all too perfect. Avery Fisher Hall was filled with men in their tuxedos and women in their ornate evening dresses. As the lights dimmed over the audience, The New York Philharmonic began their 2010 New York City New Years Eve Concert. The conductor raised his baton in the air and swiftly waived it cutting all the anticipation that had accumulated seconds before. The New York Philharmonic had started playing their wonderful orchestrated rendition of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1. As soon as the music began playing, all the whispers went silent, and I felt as though in that moment, in that moment of time all the problems I had, all the thoughts that were stirring in my head seconds before the conductor waved his baton had deviated away from me and I was in a state of euphoria.

I am a classical music appreciator. Although my love for this genre of music developed very late in my life, by my senior year of high school my room was always filled with the enticing sound of Mozart, Beethoven and Vivaldi. Classical music is my passage to the ethereal world. A world of peace and joy. My love for the genre not only propelled me head first into a this world but exposed me to new artists, culture and compositions.

I enjoyed learning everything about classical music from the history to the composition. I would attend exhibitions at Metropolitan Museum of Art to learn about the development of the genre from the early Medieval era to the Romantic era. I learned about how the music had changed from one period to another but how in modern classical music all the influence from each era is vividly heard and retained. I remember going to lectures sponsored by my music conservatories trying to understand how Vivaldi was able to compose music out of pure inspiration and feeling. I frequently attended summer concerts in Central Park prior to my senior just to listen to compositions of unheard composers.

In my junior year of high school I brought children in a Bronx community outreach program the small collection of Beethoven's work that I had hoping that I would inspire these children to look at classical music the way I do and bring forth the same passion I have for the music into them.

My love of classical music influenced me by teaching me that if you are passionate about something to such great extent you should go out of your way to encompass your life in it. Teach yourself everything there is to learn about your passion and spread your passion on to a new generation of people who will value and love of it they way you do.