Undergraduate / WOMEN WHO DESIRE TO SET PRECEDENTS, CHANGE HISTORY & SUCCEED; U Michigan ; COMMUNITY [5]

Hi all,
I'd love to get some feedback on my essay for UMich. It's one of my top choices and I'd like to turn it in tomorrow.

Let me know what you think!

Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it. (Approximately 250 words)

She sits, dismembering beans from their stalks, as her brothers draw the alphabet in the dust. She watches, tracing the intricate loops and burning the figures into her memory. She whispers, under the whirring of the wind, the poetry her brothers had carelessly recited; The words that leap off an unappreciated page, and the letters that differentiate her from the woman before her.

My great-aunt was not asked whether she wanted to learn how to read. My grandmother was pulled out of school in the third grade. My mother recently just earned her undergraduate degree. These are the women in my family, unable to set precedents and change history because of their gender. As a child, I believed I was destined to be a flight attendant, or that I was fated to become an obstetrician; that even amongst my professional ambitions lay the connotations associated with the necessity to remain "feminine".

My community is a class of women who desire to set precedents, change history, and flourish their lives. My community are the women who desire to turn the term "feminine" into that which has the connotations of intelligence and excellence. My community are the women who wish to turn centuries of female inconspicuousness into eminence and appreciation for gender neutrality.

Perhaps my place in this community is as a suffragist. Perhaps I am destined to follow the footsteps of the boisterous Rosa Parks, or am destined to suffer a merciless death like Benazhir Butto. Perhaps I will lead an uneventful life and climb the ladders of a career in politics, like several woman before me. Perhaps nothing will happen at all.

But in the wake of my newfound adulthood I am sure of one thing. While centuries of women have remained so, I refuse to be so; I refuse to be inconspicuous.

Undergraduate / I have always been besan, a plain Indian flour!; PERSUASIVE ESSAY [4]

Hey all!
So my first choice university in the US said that I could turn in a supplemental essay if I wanted to, so I wrote one! Please let me know what you think! I'd like to turn it in by tomorrow!

Thank you so much!!

I have always been besan, a plain Indian flour, bound to the taste of whatever is being made. I remain hidden under the crisp succulency of red onion, and even more so under the rich sweetness of jaggery. While the spice, the sugar, and the bitter of a dish steal the show, I remain besan, the batter and the flour.

As a child I was plain; my mary-janes always a tarnished black, and my skirts, khakhi and well-pressed. I would trapaise along the school hallway, my hair tightly brushed into pigtails, and my handkerchief pinned to the side of my white-starched blouse. On the days I would beg my mother to let me be risque, she would let my hair down, and then began the satisfying feeling of covering the nape of my neck.

I was plain on the inside as well. I remained the tall Indian girl, the one who memorized the multiplication tables too fast, the one who read chapter books for pleasure, and the one who never slept over. I was the little girl who wore long sleeves with her cheerleading uniform, the one who visited the temple every Saturday, and the one who never found her 'best friend for life'. I was bland.

But I never transformed into the sweet jaggery, the spicy cinnammon, or the mouth-watering onion. I have always remained besan, the plain Indian flour. While the majority of my peers excelled in mathematics, in the sciences, in the fine arts, or even in sports, I did not. I was the one with the talents of oration and of writing, two abilities too plain and too insignificant in the eyes of the world around me. I have remained plain.

Besan, however, is a shape-shifter. Its grains fall into the mould of whatever it desires to be. It may be plain, and it may be bland, but it is basic; it is fundamental, the pulse to a beating heart. Besan is the batter that holds together the spice, the sweet, and the bitter of a dish. It is the base for all that must occur, its existence a raw necessity. I may be besan, but to it I can shift into all that I wish to be, and to it I can add all that I must.

Being besan is who I am. Being the glue, the shapeshifter, I have conquered the existence of my benign breast tumor, the death of my grandfather, the difficulties of the IB program, as well as a family background of uneducated, oppressed women. I may be plain and I may seem bland, but I can be thrown chilli and still be standing. Because I live life strong, I live life as changing, and I live life as besan, through and through.

Undergraduate / I am in combat. The enemy is stealthy, fast, and skilled; College App [6]

So after my terrible first essay,
I wrote another, which is quite different stylistically and thematically given the nature of college essays.
Let me know what you think!

I am in combat. The enemy is stealthy, fast, and skilled. He hides in the very moment I believe I have found him, for he is strong, and holds tricks on the corner of his sleeve. When I crouch, he runs. When I run, he shoots. We play a tantalizing game, both of us the hunters, both of us the hunted.

Last Tuesday, he was shot. In the moment when both our worlds froze, we exchanged contact, and our eyes met, for the first, and hopefully, for the last time. In mine, I held resilience and strength, and in his, I saw fear.

While my heart raced, and the blood pulsed in my veins, a thousand synapses danced their ceaseless dance. The flesh of my cheek turned upward, as the warm, putrid air filled my mouth. In that moment, I was alive. I had won this battle.

The war is not yet over. We ricochet back and forth, like the slapping of a hockey puck against shattered ice. One battles ceases, and another begins, first in mud, then in wind. It has lasted months, yet there is far more to go. It may last years, the future, unknown.

The enemy is my breast tumor. I am the soldier. While I have lost battles, I have also won. My tumor will not prevent me from becoming the woman I wish to become, the one who breaks a familial cycle of oppressed, undereducated women. My tumor will not prevent me from being at the school, I so vehemently love, Northwestern. And my tumor most certainly will not prevent me from following the dreams I so desperately chase.

My enemy is strong, capable, and resilient, but I will not fail. I will take on the enemy, I will outstrip him, and I will win this war.