Undergraduate / Sharps and Flats - common app essay... [10]

Sharps and Flats (commonapp essay)

Rays of the early morning sun peep into my room. They fall on my face, and I wake up. I make my way to the living room on tiptoes, careful to preserve the tranquil silence. And there it is, perched on top of a wooden platform, the sunbeams reflecting elegantly from its burnished skin, a giant, mahogany oak structure. My piano.

I lift the covering and out come the keys, black and white. Time stands still as I gaze at them, mesmerized by the way they coexist with each other, in a fraternity. And then I start playing.

The melody of Chopin's Nocturne pierces through the thick silence. Surrounded by the cacophony of musical notes, I become separated from the physical world. My emotions start going wild as I feel energy pulsating through every artery, every vein and every capillary. I am overwhelmed by a force I cannot see and I am rising. I am soaring high.

I fall. The world comes back into focus and the melody stops. What had happened? I looked down on the keyboard and saw my index finger on a black key, a sharp.

A flat was the correct note to be played.

For as long as I can remember, the janus faced nature of the black keys had always confused me. C sharp is the same key as the D flat. D sharp is the same note as E flat. C does not have a flat, E a sharp, while D has both. Key signatures never made sense to me; that is, until I grew older.

According to history, when Bartolomeo Cristofori first created the pianoforte, he called it a "harpsichord with loudness and softness". It was given qualities that none of its parents, the dulcimer or the clavichord, possessed. It was made for perfection.

It is strangely human, the piano. The black keys, how they sound so similar and yet produce tunes so different. How the same key can produce two different meanings and how the same meaning can be found from two different keys. How the piano sounds different, unique, each time I attempt to play it.

Countless are the number of times I have played a wrong note, produced a wrong melody and heard a wrong sound. Wrong sharps and wrong flats have appeared numerous times in the staccatos of my life. I have often sat in silence, looking down on the keys, frustrated by my inability to get them right.

But I practiced.

I got better.

I became good.

I became very good.

I became excellent.

There is a lesson I have learned over my years as a pianist. There are more white keys than black ones. More normals than sharps or flats. And all it takes to hit the right keys, is to play the wrong ones, and learn from it.

I take a shot at Nocturne once more. This time, there are no mistakes. No wrong sharps, no inappropriate flats. The melody is untainted, smooth and mellifluous.

I had done it.

please leave comments...and be real harsh!!!

Undergraduate / Does financial aid count on the excellence of one's essays??? [7]

I know its a stupid question, but its been eating me up inside.

Undergraduate / Metallism: a real unorthodox commonapp essay [8]

Metallism

Do you know how it feels to be touched by God? I do. I swear. I felt him yesterday.

Call me crazy but I will stick to my claim. I have felt god, and have done so numerous times before. It was only yesterday that I realized it was Him.

When I think back, I can say that I have felt his presence for almost everyday for the last three of four years. Confused? You should be. It's because despite being told that He is all around you, you have never noticed him. I know why. There is a medium, a state of mind that you need to be in before you can interact. And that medium is metal. As in, metal music. I assure you of my sanity.

It will be really hard; wait let me rephrase that; it will be impossible for an outsider to comprehend the spirituality that is intertwined with heavy metal. After all, this music is vulgar, boorish, aggressive and vehement. Songs have no structure, rhythm has no meaning, lyrics make no sense. And the fans? Heathens. They go to concerts, they engage in battles, they swirl their heads, they scream, they shout.

And yet, we know what divinity feels like, and you don't. Whenever I am listening to metal, I get separated from the physical world, succumbing to isolation. I feel energy pulsating through every artery, every vein, every capillary. My emotions start going wild. I feel anger and I feel peace. I feel love and I feel hate. I see black and I see white. All my feelings scream out, they tear out of me, forming a bizarre cacophony, to which I start swinging my head from side to side, attempting to drown it out. It is painful and sweet to hear at the same time. And at one point it stops. Everything stops. I fell overpowered, overwhelmed by a force I cannot see. And I am flying. I fall back to the physical world. I had felt God.

I do not expect you to understand, even if you turn on some metal right now and attempt to feel what I feel. The world of metal is dark and unwelcoming. It will penetrate you but ever so slowly. It will levitate you, but ever so slightly. And you will lose your faith in it.

You will criticize it and condemn its advocators. You will regard it as blasphemy and you will antagonize it. And I do not blame you. Humanity has been down that path before. They were skeptical when Jesus started preaching. They were skeptical after he was ostracized. They were skeptical right until he was crucified. But their skepticism disappeared didn't it? Jesus proved himself.

I am not certain if metal can ever be proven. And I am not certain if what I experience is divinity at all. But regardless of the doubts, I love the feeling. I love the feeling of isolation when I listen to metal at home. I love the feeling of unity when I listen to metal in a concert, standing arm in arm with a fellow human being I have never met. It's the feeling that makes Metal a religion; and I am a devout follower.

i really want to send this, but i dont know if it'll be ok to do so.

Undergraduate / commonapp essay- cliches (and topic ideas) [12]

all for cliches

I got a C on my last essay assignment which, if you ask me, was fairly well written. When I asked my teacher to reconsider her judgment, she had the following to say about my paper.

Dull; boring; one dimensional; platitudinal; newspaperese; filled with clichés. She talked about clichés a lot.

By definition, a cliché is a saying, expression, or idea that has been overused to the point of loosing its intended force or novelty. These are generally frowned upon and omitted from creative writings. They are taught in schools as the enemy, an incorrect, nonsensical string of words, that it is the maverick thing to do to run them down. Students are told to avoid them at all costs and watch out for them; to guard their papers with all of their (mental) strength against these hackneyed phrases. We were even handed a list.

Top ten clichés to avoid-

1) at the end of the day 2) fairly unique 3) I personally 4) at this moment in time 5) with all due respect 6) absolutely 7) it's a nightmare 8) shouldn't of 9) 24/7 10) It's not rocket science.

I however, disagree with my mentors.

I say clichés are beautiful. They are the true keys to any reader's heart. They appear everywhere. We read them in novels and see them in newspapers, yet we are forbidden to throw them into our essay in a formal setting. Ridiculous.

I know that I am not the only one who feels a tinge of emptiness after reading something without phrases such as a "I personally" or "with all due respect". In fact, such writings do not exist.

And we shun clichés why? Clichés became clichés in the first place because they express sentiments or reality continually. They are made of the same characters as every other word so why set them apart? Why introduce them to the world as evil in a brainwashing event to slowly kill them off? Language has given us the ability to use these clichés in fascinating ways or in contexts they are not used often. Let's use that ability.

Clichés are admirable. They allow us mediums to relate to our fellow beings and feel exactly as they feel. Nearly every magazine article and newspaper article can capture clichés at their best. It's what keeps the average Joe reading so why are they discouraged?

In this world of extreme individualism, it is difficult to resist the temptation to be unique. Everyone tries to be stand out, whether it is through acting different, dressing different or more recently, writing different. What is truly difficult is to be commonplace.

So let's use clichés. Let's be common. Lets' not take part in the fad to make ourselves noticed.

I personally feel at the end of the day you cannot be fairly 24/7 unique. It's a nightmare absolutely and at this moment in time it is not rocket science.

All for clichés all the way.

So what do you people think?? I had a hard time deciding if this essay had enough "I" in it

Writing Feedback / an experiment essay - A memorable evening [9]

A memorable evening

I remember knowing someone called Gregor once. Gregor Samsa. The last time I visited his house, I saw a huge cockroach!

Then my friend Franz told me that the cockroach was actually Gregor.

"What? He turned into an insect? How? What for?"

Franz smiles. Sadly. "He just couldn't do it. And now he's gone."

Silence.

I look around the park where we are. Children are playing, couples too. In the bench beside ours sat a joker and a thief. Their conversation is audible, and I, despite my reluctance, can't help but eavesdrop.

"There must be some way out of here" said the joker to the thief.
There's too much confusion", I can't get no relief

"No reason to get excited", the thief he kindly spoke.
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke"

"Life is a joke!" shouts Wolfgang, who has just joined us.

I admire Wolfgang. He is a genius. He transformed the tale of Don Giovanni's punishment into one of amusement. Sure Byron was sore, but he too came around after witnessing Wolfgang's version of the epic.

"Let us laugh my friends, let us be merry. Let us be amused of misery and bemused of pain. Let us find joy at the sufferings of others and let others find joy at ours. Sorrow is hilarious my friends, so let us laugh, laugh, laugh!! HO HO HO!"

Silence.

Everyone is bewildered. The children have stopped playing, the couples too. The joker is speechless, the thief too. The wind blows, the leaves rustle. And stands there Wolfgang, laughing at the silence, laughing at our shock, laughing out loud.

"I shall do it", says Franz under his breath, "I shall amuse the world."

He jumps up.

"I shall tell the world, the story of Gregor Samsa, and his metamorphosis. I shall make the world laugh where Gregor had cried, and laugh harder when Gregor had died."

"Because life is a joke," said the joker.

"And sorrow the thief," said the thief.

"And life's only bane," said Wolfgang,
"is not laughing at pain."

Everyone breaks into laughter; the children, the couples, the leaves, the trees. O what merriment!

Franz strides out in determination, saying he had a book to write. Wolfgang leaves with his new friends the joker and the thief. Children go home. Couples kiss goodbye. The sun sets, bringing about an end to a magical evening.

I stand alone in the darkness. And I break out into laughter.

this is strictly an experiment. Worthy?