13etoiles
Jul 23, 2013
Undergraduate / "The tunnel that changed me" - Common app/ Place that I am perfectly contented! [3]
Hello. I am having hard time figuring out if I am on the right track for the common app essay. I wanted to show how my experience at the place have changed me.
Any comment or advice is welcomed. Please don't hesitate to criticize anything that doesn't seem right. THANKS !!
Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?
I tightly held the blade in my sweaty hands. I didn't know my heart could beat so fast until that night.
No one expected me to come this far but I was there and there was no going back. In that dark tunnel, I could feel all my intestines and organs twisting and squeezing so hardly; I thought I was going to burst into pieces. I have never felt such a feeling before. All I knew for sure was that I was insanely nervous.
I leaned against the wall and saw kiss marks all over it. Thousands and thousands of other guard girls and boys had been in my place, peeking into the grand arena and watching the groups before us telling their stories. What could have they been thinking, waiting impatiently behind the curtain?
Nothing came into my mind other than all the possible mistakes I could make on that floor; I could drop my saber on that toss or I could bump into Amy like I did on that one rehearsal. I even shook my head, trying to shake off all the bad thoughts with no success. I peeked into the arena again and could easily estimate the spectator number to be more than 5,000. I was about to run up the tunnel and out of the arena.
While aimlessly looking around, I saw a sentence written on the wall.
'You know what to do'
Of course, my head immediately thought 'Do I really know?' My auto self-doubt activated again. I mean, I knew the show, and I knew where to go. But what if... That had been my question for everything. I couldn't resist thinking about the possibilities that had not even shown itself to me.
I thought back to the past 10 months I had spent with these girls; I remembered that we had spent 24 hours a week sweating, bleeding, breaking, and exhausting ourselves just to be in this tunnel at this moment. We began from pointing out foot to throwing weapons and flags in the air and catch them like it's no one's business. I had been sleeping 2 or 3 hours a day, trying to catch up with school work and keep my standard high, so I could enjoy this moment as much as, if not more than, these girls around me. Of course I knew what to do. I spent so many hours and so much effort to "know" what I would do that night. I even knew that making mistakes was a way to gain the recovery points. I looked into myself again. Without my acknowledgement, I was enjoying this moment as much as I wanted to escape it. I did know what to do and I just had to believe in myself that I knew. That easy.
The feeling of Dayton Arena - I know call it - was tension with extreme excitement, and I could feel it because I trusted me. The little freshmen I was, it wasn't too late to engrave a new word in my heart. I walked out of the tunnel with "confidence" newly added to my list.
"Please welcome Walton High School." The crowd went wild.
"Is the guard ready?" I answered, yes.
I revisited the tunnel just a few months ago, with different flags, different makeup, different costume, different show, and different me. It was the same arena but this time, it felt like I was at my home ground. It was where I learned to put away self-doubts and to be myself. The sentence on the tunnel wall that hit me couple of years ago, was still there. I left my kiss mark right next to it and showed it to my little freshmen guard sister so she could comeback in a couple of years with different herself.
Hello. I am having hard time figuring out if I am on the right track for the common app essay. I wanted to show how my experience at the place have changed me.
Any comment or advice is welcomed. Please don't hesitate to criticize anything that doesn't seem right. THANKS !!
Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?
I tightly held the blade in my sweaty hands. I didn't know my heart could beat so fast until that night.
No one expected me to come this far but I was there and there was no going back. In that dark tunnel, I could feel all my intestines and organs twisting and squeezing so hardly; I thought I was going to burst into pieces. I have never felt such a feeling before. All I knew for sure was that I was insanely nervous.
I leaned against the wall and saw kiss marks all over it. Thousands and thousands of other guard girls and boys had been in my place, peeking into the grand arena and watching the groups before us telling their stories. What could have they been thinking, waiting impatiently behind the curtain?
Nothing came into my mind other than all the possible mistakes I could make on that floor; I could drop my saber on that toss or I could bump into Amy like I did on that one rehearsal. I even shook my head, trying to shake off all the bad thoughts with no success. I peeked into the arena again and could easily estimate the spectator number to be more than 5,000. I was about to run up the tunnel and out of the arena.
While aimlessly looking around, I saw a sentence written on the wall.
'You know what to do'
Of course, my head immediately thought 'Do I really know?' My auto self-doubt activated again. I mean, I knew the show, and I knew where to go. But what if... That had been my question for everything. I couldn't resist thinking about the possibilities that had not even shown itself to me.
I thought back to the past 10 months I had spent with these girls; I remembered that we had spent 24 hours a week sweating, bleeding, breaking, and exhausting ourselves just to be in this tunnel at this moment. We began from pointing out foot to throwing weapons and flags in the air and catch them like it's no one's business. I had been sleeping 2 or 3 hours a day, trying to catch up with school work and keep my standard high, so I could enjoy this moment as much as, if not more than, these girls around me. Of course I knew what to do. I spent so many hours and so much effort to "know" what I would do that night. I even knew that making mistakes was a way to gain the recovery points. I looked into myself again. Without my acknowledgement, I was enjoying this moment as much as I wanted to escape it. I did know what to do and I just had to believe in myself that I knew. That easy.
The feeling of Dayton Arena - I know call it - was tension with extreme excitement, and I could feel it because I trusted me. The little freshmen I was, it wasn't too late to engrave a new word in my heart. I walked out of the tunnel with "confidence" newly added to my list.
"Please welcome Walton High School." The crowd went wild.
"Is the guard ready?" I answered, yes.
I revisited the tunnel just a few months ago, with different flags, different makeup, different costume, different show, and different me. It was the same arena but this time, it felt like I was at my home ground. It was where I learned to put away self-doubts and to be myself. The sentence on the tunnel wall that hit me couple of years ago, was still there. I left my kiss mark right next to it and showed it to my little freshmen guard sister so she could comeback in a couple of years with different herself.