Undergraduate / 'work in close proximity with the people' - Common App=ECA [4]

Some words are random for privacy reasons, but the no. of letters is fine.
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APPP XXXXX has been a humble endeavor of mine for the past three years. What had started out as an impulsive outcry, brought upon by the failures and empty promises of the youth organizations that I had worked with, has grown into a strategic model that now allows individuals from disparate communities to engage in social activism, however small it may seem.

Working under the guidance of UNXX xxxxx has been an honor I initially found too heavy to bear, but in time, I have come to understand my position in my community and lead several projects of this movement, one that now comprised of over 200 dedicated individuals from several institutions. As we remained adamant in our resolution to not register it officially, I have been able to work in close proximity with the people I desired to help. As I hand out a free book to another child, I cannot not help but be truly overwhelmed by the impact of our work on children who strive to learn, and, inadvertently teach us a lot along the way.

Undergraduate / 'the significance of lines in my life' something about you that you want us to know. [13]

Tell us something about you that you want us to know.

I took the pencil in my hand, by then glistening with nervous perspiration, while the anxiety slowly crept into me. I forced the ruler against the rough yellow page, wondering if this was going to be the end of what I so strived to achieve. Resisting the temptation to remove the solitary bead of sweat hanging on the edge of my jaw, I dragged my arm cautiously, careful to suppress my proclivity for straying from the line I decided to take. As the the graphite made its awaited contact with the trailing edge of the ruler, a sense of euphoria took hold of me as I realized I had managed to draw a parallelogram after all this work.

Lines have a beauty of their own. Devoid of sense of beginning and end on their own, they co-exist with various other shapes and curves, complimenting them while creating the most appealing of images. Seldom can a man stand before the the Louvre and not be amazed at how several lines come together to give us, the audience, a sense of grandeur in front of our eyes. Nor are we ever underwhelmed by the magic that the three lines, resting against each other, and a circle, nestling solemnly between them, create in Rowling's final work. We find meaning behind the interaction of lines, give them names. A coming together of three lines at an angle was called a triangle. The interaction of four perpendicular lines was called a square. At times we take these shapes for granted, forgetting the brilliance of the individual lines that came together to form a group of such lines. We attach rules to such shapes, ones we believe will hold true every time they come together in a certain way. Theorems upon theorems are built on this neglect of the individual lines, ones that we concentrated on only when they were alone. But we forget that lines interact with other shapes, but they also shine by themselves, for no man could withhold his wonder as he stands on the the edge of the Rose Line, one that traveled miles and told a story often forgotten.

Lines have a treasured place in my life. I sit at my desk, brooding over a blue college brochure, while surrounded by the lines on the edges of the walls, parallel and perpendicular to each other alternatively. Lines withhold us in the form of the limits we set to ourselves, keeping us enclosed in the square we imagine being in. There are some lines we cannot cross while some lines we ought not to cross. Some keep us safe, away from a world of anarchy and chaos, while others point us to the direction of the loo. But at times, we need to forgo our adulation for such lines and transcend our own limitations. We need to break way from a few lines, and take a stand, be it a social stand in the form of a youth movement, or a personal stand in the form of me telling my friend that she should take steps against her abusive father. Perhaps, we do not destroy lines after all. Perhaps, we create new ones as we escape the boundaries set up by the ones we cross.

As I draw another line on the yellow page of my notebook, I wonder about the significance of lines in my life. They bring a synchronization to the world I live in. They bring regularity to my actions and point the direction to which I ought to strive. Lines interact to to form the outline of the books I loved to read, while they give beauty to the neck of a guitar, calling on us to explore the depths of our soul in the realms of its metallic strings. I strive to escape some, while I am happy to be guided by some. Lines have always been a part of me, and will always accompany me wherever I may roam, whichever line I choose to follow.

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I decided to show rather than tell here. A lot of philosophical things are implied in the descriptions of the lines, and how I view them. I hope it was interesting, and showed how I think.

Undergraduate / 'snippets of Urdu' ONE paragraph grammatically [5]

A Routine Walk

The familiar sound of the bells brought the class to an abrupt halt. Dr Gupta stopped midway through his lecture, but before I could pounce on this window of opportunity, he bolted out of the room with his characteristic "see you in the next class". Sigh. I put the battered physics book in my bag, and made my way through the four flights of stairs, as the arching trees gave way to the gray concrete that marked the exit to my world, and a door into a world I did not fully understand. Hesitantly pulling myself out, I was greeted by the landmark of central Mohammad Pur: the Town Hall. Once an imperious British architecture that loomed over a frightened 10 year old boy, the town hall bazaar had slowly evolved into his favorite hub for a delicious biriyani. As the red faded with each passing year, each uncovered brick got lost beneath a sea of electoral posters. But the red brick structure was a constant, unchanging through time, ageing as if in step with me.

Left turn. I had barely walked ten paces when my preoccupation was interrupted by snippets of Urdu. I looked up to see a dark woman conversing exuberantly with child, while putting up decorations for the imminent Muharram. The glint in her eyes, as she affectionately held her son, told a story contrary to the one I had come to expect over the years and made me question my perception of how they reacted to the hardships of a refugee camp. During my last trip to Geneva Camp, courtesy of a few friends I made there, I had found these 'stateless' citizens, ones who shared a common restroom with a dozen other families and lived in boxlike apartments, ready to embrace any visitor with a smile and a cup of tea.

I walked away towards the right where a sea of white kufis dispersed from the gates of the local mosque. Timidly pushing my way through, I searched for the familiar eyes that once looked down at me as I relentlessly questioned their beliefs, just as I looked down at them. But my search did not bear the expected results, but rather provided me with a few curt nods and an odd smile, a sign of an understanding fostered by engaging dialogues over the past few years. I walked away from Shaheed Park Masjid, distancing myself from a boundary which I had once attempted to escape, the "shackles" of which I had once despised.

I trudged along the road, confused, straying away from the uncovered pavement, when my eyes fell on the familiar turf that was the public field of Salimulla Road. The memory of the recent Cricket World Cup gushed through me, the matches of which two hundred people watched through a hired projector. Sitting in the midst of the roaring crowd, I had somehow, against all the intuition I had garnered through the years, joined in with the common voice that thoroughly believed it to be the sole guiding light of the team.

As I counted my steps to my house, I pondered on how I had become part of what I had dismissed; how easy I had found being engaged in my community to be. Closing the door behind me as I entered my room, I wondered what happened to the Mohaimin who looked down at his community, who constantly wondered why they were so happy to make borders for themselves, and quietly brood in them, never striving for something more. I was an outcast, a proud anomaly. As oft taken road bore through the rains it greeted it with aplomb every year, I slowly came to realize how this community I shunned helped me grow, and how my very existence and my thoughts are defined by it. Although my position this community continues to baffle me every day as I adapt, I look around with a smile to find myself engaged with what is around me, convinced that I am product of my environment, and harboring a small hope that, somehow, my community is a product of me.

This is a part of my common app essay, the only paragraph I am unsure about in both content and prose. The last line is sooo big. Can you help me cut it down without losing the impact? I have been staring at this for a month, so everything about this essay looks right to me.

And is the idea of my change in perception clear, although not crystal clear?