Undergraduate / Chain Breaker; SoP: Grandmothers and "feminist" goals [4]

Hi,
I'm new on this forum so I will follow the rules of posting a thread to the best of my abilities.

This is about the Common App Essay. I wrote something that really inspires me and, I think, shows what motivates me. However, I received different opinions on it, some of them flattering my writing skills, but some thought I should completely change the topic.

Please help with this dilemma! (I replaced my name in the essay with "MYNAME" and the name of a city with "CITY X" just for privacy)

Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Chain Breaker

Everyone, from kids to elderly, called her Mmi Hania. Mmi is "mother" in Darija, and Hania is an Arab name that stands for tranquility and peacefulness. Tranquil and peaceful is exactly how she deserved to be when it was time to draw her last breath, which sadly was not the case. Mee-ha-nee-ya... It sounds like an onomatopoeia, that of a cheerful crowd or of tandem bungee-jumpers. It sounds like her vibrant laugh and people's simultaneous reactions to her scandalous jokes. She loved telling me about how she laughed at all my parents' suggestions of names for me and asserted: "MYNAME - there is no way to contort it, and it's so rare she will be the only MYNAME around... loved, envied, stubborn and resolute". She gave me my name; moreover, she gave me my indentity. "Plus, no one will ask MYNAME who? nor need to pronounce that absurd last name of yours", she adds, mocking my dad.

Mmi Hania is my deceased grandmother: a wonderful soul, drained by a lifetime of struggle with patriarchy, abuse, and injustice. Surprisingly, her worries never kept her from joking about absolutely everything. Her unmissable smile covered for her heavy, arcane blue-green eyes.

In the morning of December 20th, 2011, my heart burnt as if a colony of bees took turn to boisterously sting it in the same spot in less than two seconds. My friend and I were playing charades during "recess". As I was acting out the word "poison", my "poisened" face expression froze, and was replaced with a distressed frown. I ran to the administration, called my dad, and as I perhaps empathically expected: "She's gone", he said. I dropped the phone, and my knees dropped me.

Mmi Hania may have had diabetes, myelopathy, and in her last months alive, liver cancer due to eight years of not-so-miraculous prescription drugs, but these were merely the medically diagnosed causes. What wore her out were bygone, overlapping incidents and an inhumane lifestyle that damaged her both mentally and physically.

I had never truly witnessed death before. When my paternal grandfather passed away, I was so young. After the funeral, we had to go back home from CITY X which I loved, so I said: "Why can't we wait until Lalla (my grandmother) dies?". I was only three years old. This time, not only did I experience loss, but I also witnessed an impregnable wall fall down: I saw my mother, the strongest person I know, collapsing on the floor, her face draining in tears.

At that moment, it hit me: my mother was crawling down the same path that led to Mmi Hania's internal deterioration. My mother is educated and an educator. She raised us in the most irreproachable manner, and kept our family together despite all dilemmas. However, she is still dealing with the same manipulative, self-centered "men of the family" and with her "condemnation" for being an average woman in this society.

That day, I decided I will not stand for twenty hours a day in the kitchen to serve fully-capable humans. I will not get yelled at nor beaten up. My dignity will not be thrown in mud, and my honor will not be stepped on. My rights will be protected, and my life will be run by my own decisions and needs. I will not be financially nor socially dependant on anyone.

When I was on a Student Ambassador exchange program in the United States, I met Karen, a science of mind practitioner. She was Mmi Hania's age, only healthier and happier. After she read my astrological chart, she said: "You were born to heal the seven past generations and the seven generations to come". I want to break the chain that condemned women in my family, to relieve the wounds of the long gone unresting souls watching over me, and to insure the well-being of those to come.

Undergraduate / 'Not afraid, freed.' - COMMON APP ESSAY [4]

Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Not afraid, freed.

Daddy once wrote on my noteboard with his uncanny arabic manuscript handwriting: "Fear will not keep you from dying, but it will keep you from living". I'm no coward but I'm no stranger to fear either; fear grew in me unvoluntarily. Between living with an authoritarian older brother and witnessing the damaging effects of partriarchy on my mother's and my grandmother's upbringing, I did not know where I stood nor where to stand. I didn't understand inequality, abuse, and crimes. Truth be told, I still don't. "Don't go out alone", "don't wear that", they said. "It is not safe". Fear is disabling. I was scared to be left alone with an older man. I was scared when I heard steps behind me. I was scared to exist outside of my shelters: home and school. Ironically, when I received a grant to travel 6000 miles away from them, for 365 days, I unreluctantly decided to go.

A few years earlier, I still thought that "two" was pronounced "t-wooh". Then, I went from watching subtitled american TV shows to begging my drama teacher to allow improvisations in English. My tongue, my voice chords, and every bit of me were fascinated by the tones and flexibility of the language, and were eager to speak it. It was no longer time to be afraid, it was time to be freed.

I was no longer Khalil's little sister; I was *mynamehere*, the Moroccan Student Ambassador. At first, I didn't feel like anything more than an estranged little fish in a big tank. In reality, I was a big fish transferred from a minuscule tank to an undiscovered sea, one I now feel I belong to.

The challenges I was expected to face were culture shock, socialization, adaptation to the host family...etc. However, my only challenge was the feeling of unsafety that was rooted in me. I refused to walk home after dark after dance or theatre rehearsals, or to ride my bike side by side to speeding cars. Little did I know, these activities were to unchain my mind and body. It upset my host mom when I asked my friends to drive me. "You're a strong, independant woman", she always told me, "acknowledge it and be it".

She was right. Little by little, I pushed away all obstacles. I was no longer afraid of the man walking behind me; we exchanged greetings every morning. I no longer hid my phone; my iPod nano hung to my shirt while I went jogging. I befriended the bus drivers, and passed on my friends' offers for rides. In fact, I flew accross the United States, toured the East Coast, climbed a mountain, and jumped off a 35 feet high "Leap of Faith". Through it all, I did feel safe.

Everytime I biked up a hill, in my mind I climbed up one step farther from submission. Everytime I biked down a hill, in my mind I let go of all the oppressive memories, and welcomed a feeling that I long for the day women all over the world will experience. The fresh oxygen traveling to my lungs and through my cells spoke positive thoughts to my mind and heart. From that point on, everything I did was twice more enjoyable than it used to be. Every dance routine I perfected was another fight I won for all the women who are only allowed to sing quietly in their kitchens, and every spotlight that hit me as I stood on the masonite stage floor in the opera-size auditorium, was a statement that I was *mynameagain*, the Student Ambassador, the "strong, independant (young) woman", who has made the decision to live and not to fear.

After all, as written in a red marker on my noteboard, "fear will keep you from living", and may I add, education and enriching experiences will teach you how to.

Undergraduate / GLOBAL ISSUE : EDUCATION [3]

This is the supplement essay for the Huntsman Program at UPenn. Please give as much feedback as possible!

In light of your personal interests in language, business, and international affairs, please discuss a current global issue and explain how the Huntsman Program would allow you to explore it in greater depth. (400-650 words)

Being born and raised in a country that hasn't yet truely risen above the influence of the French Colonization, I came to notice that there are major incoherencies in our educational system. While my classmates and I were discussing our future goals, I realized the distrust we have developed in our educational system and the fear of "what comes after high school". Our talents are burried, our penchants ignored, and our misguided path is traced by fear and conformity. Consequently, this disorientation and lack of acquired values and of opportunities eventually lead to many of the deplorable global issues we witness today, issues that the failure of many aspects of education is responsible for.

One of the shortcomings of adopting the French educational system in Francophone Africa is the gap between the objectives of this system, and the deficiency of the economical resources and cultural means to attain them. This establishes a conspicuous imbalance in the students' education. Pursuing higher education mandates a certain proficiency in foreign languages, one that is not stressed in seconday education. Similarly, and in a time of globalization, the business world is highly contingent on the mastery of the foreign business languages.

Globally, not only is the quality of education inefficient, but the access to education remains unequal between sexes, races, and social classes, creating a steep fissure in societies. It is needless to cite the shocking numbers of uneducated suppressed women, disabled children, street children, and elderly. This entails many aggravating issues: unemployment, poverty, crimes, segragation, "brain drains", illegal immigration. To offset this gap, there needs to be a harmonization of the languages of instruction, a use of sustainable, non-exorbitant didactic resources, and more focus on the student's self development and readiness to take part in the outside world.

I spent a year in the United States as a student ambassador on a cultural exchange program. Exploring various dimensions of the American educational system was an eye-opening experience. I learned the true meaning of the latin words "educare" and "educere": I was being shaped into someone whose image used to be distorted, just as much as I was growing out of the monotonous robotic being I had been obligated to be, into the creative, active, and flourishing human being I had always wanted to be. I felt like a plant being watered, but I thought of all the derelict, infinitely large fields of flora that aren't.

Education is about gaining a well-rounded knowledge and the literary and behavioral skills to play a lead role in life rather than to live in passivity, all while clinging to ethics and continuously gaining a global understanding of the world we live in. So far, I have merely been able to witness facts and "generate" thoughts on issues affecting our world. The Huntsman program, on the other hand, would make me a doer rather than an observer.

The Huntsman program offers the opportunity for students to shape their own education experience based on their own visions of what lead role they want to play, what challenges they are willing to face, and what causes they are willing to stand up for. I want to mature my passion for languages, travelling, and international interchange, and take it to a more professional and productive level. Through business, I want to stand in a towering position that defies the prevailing stereotype concerning women from my cultural background, and have the power and the means to take action internationally in issues I share concerns for and feel strongly about.

The Huntsman program provides simultaneously the freedom and the perfect frame for me to nourrish that desire, and to pursue my ambitions with confidence that I will have acquired a true education. It would not only water a thirsty plant, but will turn it into a fully burgeoned, distinguished living organism, ready to spread its own seeds and bring life to its milieu.