Undergraduate / Journalism is my Ambrosia -- Extracurricular Activities Essay for Common App [2]

Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences in the space below (1000 character maximum).

I always thought that I would become the next J.K. Rowling and create a brilliant series of 400 page books that everyone would fawn and die for. That was not the result. After writing the first half of the first chapter of what was to be my first novel, I found that my creative juices just did not want to flow and help me write the other 399 pages that would make this a novel. That was when I found journalism. I consumed the sweet brevity, the furious typing of reporters trying to make a deadline, and the knowledge that what you wrote could change the world. Through my role as editor-in-chief of my school news-magazine to my role as the creator of my personal fashion blog, journalism has intertwined its way into my life so much so that it has become my ambrosia. Journalism has taught me how to be adaptable, quick on my feet, precise in my words, to communicate well to others, and has created so many opportunities for me, from travelling to Louisiana to covering New York Fashion Week.

Hey guys! Thanks for any comments! I hope you guys are as blunt as you need to be, I can take any criticism. Just a fair warning, I have 999 characters already in this passage, so I am cutting it extremely close to the limit.

Thanks

Undergraduate / Being Black in Suburbia -- Common App Essay [2]

A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.

My dad always jokes that my family is like an East Coast military family, leapfrogging from place to place along the Atlantic Ocean five years at a time. From New York to Florida, I've had my taste of a plethora of suburban environments. They were and still are all the same: the mostly uniform houses, the community pools, the stereotypical Stepford wives, and the close knit kids that knew each other since they were in diapers.

Insert me, Taylor Brown, an African-American girl with a kooky sense of style and an unhealthy fervor for reading into this McLean, Virginia world of lacrosse and freshly mowed grass. I was an anomaly.

McLean, Virginia is a center for almost all things related to the government, from the CIA headquarters in Langley to the heavy influence of the nation's capital (only twenty minutes away). Knowing that there was such a direct relationship between McLean and the political hotspot, I came to Virginia with high hopes for a fresh start. I was excited -- a new school, a new environment, a new beginning (clichĂŠ as it may sound). Looking back now, I was right in some ways and completely wrong in others. This was definitely a new school, and the environment was not like any other that I have seen, but the school was not diverse in the ways that I had wanted it to be. With only three percent of African American students in the student body, McLean High School was a new challenge that I was going to have to adapt to and conquer.

Although the students enrolled were exposed to a more international diversity, with kids of diplomats interacting with kids of CIA agents, they were very ignorant and naĂŻve about African American culture and life. When I walked into my first class, I was asked multiple times if I was in the right classroom or whether I had the right schedule; it wasn't expected of me to be interested in being an accomplished scholar. Because I did not fit into the stereotype created by society, I was deemed different and "not black enough." After that, I was even more determined to prove the stereotype, which the media created, wrong. I was determined to reach the same level if not surpass the rest of my classmates in all of my classes.

Living in suburbia as an African-American girl with an affinity for literature and education is still difficult as there are many naysayers who still do not believe that I have the wits and passion to succeed in education as my other peers. However, it is exactly this that fuels me every day to accomplish more than the last day. Although many can see this experience as negative, I look at it in an optimistic way. Through these challenges, I have been able to better define and distinguish exactly who I am and what I want to accomplish in my life. These obstacles have taught me to become a leader, an avid learner, and most of all how to be just me, Taylor Brown.

Thanks guys!!! Please, again, be as blunt as possible!!! :)