thukim
Dec 31, 2016
Undergraduate / Dualities permeate my existence. Common App Promp #1-College Essay [3]
I am looking for any suggestion on the essay. Any comment is welcome. Thank you guys so much!!
Prompt #1: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
The gorgeous, cocktail-blue sky darkens into gravel-grey. Swirling gray clouds gloomily darken the sky. In Vietnam, February nights are chilly, with a brisk wind picking up. The bitterly cold winter wind stings my cheeks. Tears well up in my eyes, filled with sorrow. Waves of nostalgia pulse through my body, even while I am still on the ground in my beloved country. A tinkling sound comes to my ears as the first pearls of rain tap onto the airplane's windows. As the altitude elevates, the pressure difference detonates in my head. Sucking sweets and gently blowing against a closed now and mouth to push air middle ears to equalize the pressure do not help either. Fear of not fulfill the expectations from my family on the new land petrifies my body. As I am on the verge of panicking, twinkling stars come into view. The spring sky slowly dissolves into a fragile, pellucid-dark blue after the plane achieved a stable altitude. The clouds are frail and pristinely white. They carry on moonlight ruffling breeze as the last goodbye to my departure, wishing me godspeed on my journey to the United States.
As soon as I land, dualities permeate my existence. Due to my exposure to "the double C's"-Capitalist and Communist, I collect the best traits to construct my political perspectives. In a totalitarian society, opportunities are not available to me to thrive out of the social caste. People are heedless to the concept of participating in government. Vietnam's republican socialist government no longer represents its citizen's voices, but a corrupt husk of its former self. Nevertheless, livelihood and excitement, scents and sounds still propagate across Hanoi. The transition to America soon fills me with the new country's young and energetic atmosphere. The "Land of Opportunity" grants me the freedom that I could never have imagined in Hanoi. People engage in the political sphere avidly. News and media outlets bombard voters with information about candidates. Unlike Vietnam, the country contains abundant resources for my academic interests. I can conduct my research on quorum sensing, develop software that helps medical students learn about anatomy and physiology through a virtual reality environment, and program robots. Hanoi vintage lifestyle and American youth alter my worldview.
Furthermore, the duality also orchestrates my views toward religion. Born into a Vietnamese ethnic group, Kinh, I was raised to follow Buddha's enlightenment. However, after exposing myself to the Western philosophy, the Book of Genesis sounds as intriguing as Pāli in Buddhist teaching. For example, in the story of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, is Victor's failure because he tries to mimic God, or because he does not follow the Eight Noble Truths and extinguish his unbridled desire? This intermixing and broadening of cultures has allowed me to develop a broader scope of the world. In some ways, I feel just as inquisitive about my interests as Doctor Frankenstein did prior to his spiral into madness.
Despite the differences, both worlds teach me to be kind and compassionate to one another. As the first generation to enter higher education and live the American dream, college equates success To pursue a career in the STEM and to give back the community, I designed a curriculum called LittleBits to teach children fundamental principles of engineering and basic Python for free. Saint Petersburg Public Library holds a session every Sunday for two hours. Because most of them come from a low-income family, this is their only opportunity to have any exposure to S.T.E.M. field outside of school. In those hours, their unfortunate circumstance does not stand in their creative fashion of problem-solving. In the future, I hope that I continue to spread the chances for students like me in Vietnam. Like Alan Turing once said in The Imitation Game, "sometimes it's the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."
I am looking for any suggestion on the essay. Any comment is welcome. Thank you guys so much!!
Prompt #1: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
the duality has changed my view
The gorgeous, cocktail-blue sky darkens into gravel-grey. Swirling gray clouds gloomily darken the sky. In Vietnam, February nights are chilly, with a brisk wind picking up. The bitterly cold winter wind stings my cheeks. Tears well up in my eyes, filled with sorrow. Waves of nostalgia pulse through my body, even while I am still on the ground in my beloved country. A tinkling sound comes to my ears as the first pearls of rain tap onto the airplane's windows. As the altitude elevates, the pressure difference detonates in my head. Sucking sweets and gently blowing against a closed now and mouth to push air middle ears to equalize the pressure do not help either. Fear of not fulfill the expectations from my family on the new land petrifies my body. As I am on the verge of panicking, twinkling stars come into view. The spring sky slowly dissolves into a fragile, pellucid-dark blue after the plane achieved a stable altitude. The clouds are frail and pristinely white. They carry on moonlight ruffling breeze as the last goodbye to my departure, wishing me godspeed on my journey to the United States.
As soon as I land, dualities permeate my existence. Due to my exposure to "the double C's"-Capitalist and Communist, I collect the best traits to construct my political perspectives. In a totalitarian society, opportunities are not available to me to thrive out of the social caste. People are heedless to the concept of participating in government. Vietnam's republican socialist government no longer represents its citizen's voices, but a corrupt husk of its former self. Nevertheless, livelihood and excitement, scents and sounds still propagate across Hanoi. The transition to America soon fills me with the new country's young and energetic atmosphere. The "Land of Opportunity" grants me the freedom that I could never have imagined in Hanoi. People engage in the political sphere avidly. News and media outlets bombard voters with information about candidates. Unlike Vietnam, the country contains abundant resources for my academic interests. I can conduct my research on quorum sensing, develop software that helps medical students learn about anatomy and physiology through a virtual reality environment, and program robots. Hanoi vintage lifestyle and American youth alter my worldview.
Furthermore, the duality also orchestrates my views toward religion. Born into a Vietnamese ethnic group, Kinh, I was raised to follow Buddha's enlightenment. However, after exposing myself to the Western philosophy, the Book of Genesis sounds as intriguing as Pāli in Buddhist teaching. For example, in the story of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, is Victor's failure because he tries to mimic God, or because he does not follow the Eight Noble Truths and extinguish his unbridled desire? This intermixing and broadening of cultures has allowed me to develop a broader scope of the world. In some ways, I feel just as inquisitive about my interests as Doctor Frankenstein did prior to his spiral into madness.
Despite the differences, both worlds teach me to be kind and compassionate to one another. As the first generation to enter higher education and live the American dream, college equates success To pursue a career in the STEM and to give back the community, I designed a curriculum called LittleBits to teach children fundamental principles of engineering and basic Python for free. Saint Petersburg Public Library holds a session every Sunday for two hours. Because most of them come from a low-income family, this is their only opportunity to have any exposure to S.T.E.M. field outside of school. In those hours, their unfortunate circumstance does not stand in their creative fashion of problem-solving. In the future, I hope that I continue to spread the chances for students like me in Vietnam. Like Alan Turing once said in The Imitation Game, "sometimes it's the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."
