skitzlz
Sep 1, 2009
Undergraduate / What cannot be learnt from your other applications? - Yale Supplement Essay [4]
Prompt: You have already told us about yourself in the Common Application, with its list of activities, the Short Answer, and the Personal Essay. While we leave the topic of your second essay entirely up to you, try telling us something about yourself that you believe we cannot learn elsewhere in your application. Please limit yourself to fewer than 500 words.
Essay:
Ask a teenage boy what he fears most. It's not the dark closet in the guest room. It's not the huge Rottweiler next door. It's not the babysitter's cooking. What a teenage boy fears most is dancing with a girl.
Dancing can be a very awkward ritual to first-timers. You'll see all types of strange moves, most bearing the resemblance of a chicken running around without its head. When one is dancing one feels the scrutiny of peers. A small slip can result in poison darts, or worst: gossip.
With this in mind during my freshman year of high school, I embarked on the long and painful journey to learn breakdancing. This is a dance named after the sound of crunching bones, the dislocation of joints, and cold mornings where you wake up sore and broken from the day before.
Picture this: handstands gone awry, my face planting itself into the ground. Or this: headspins that have not found a center of gravity, my arms give out, and send my legs sprawling to the cold floor. Freezes, windmills, and transitions, one slip and I'm back on the ground, all one hundred-thirty pounds of me, rolling on the floor, kicking, cursing, and bleeding.
What I've found in all my seventeen and a half years on Earth is that life is a little like breakdancing. One slip and you can find yourself on the cold floor, cursing and screaming. Some mornings you'll wake up a sore and broken man, not wanting to roll out of bed and face the cold world. Some days you'll want to give up, you forget your dreams, goals, and ambitions. You lose sight of what makes you happy. It is days like these you find yourself in a position similar to a breakdancing freeze: you feel like you are upside down, attempting to balance yourself on your head.
On days like these you need to close your eyes. You need to remember why you are doing this, the ultimate goal. Remember the phrase, "Shoot for the stars so even if you fall you'll land on the clouds." You need to push on. Do that extra push-up, that extra hand stand, hold that position for an extra five seconds. Put in that extra effort, that extra smile, push yourself to be extra-ordinary.
When breakdancing comes together the movements are beautiful. The circular motions, each move's momentum flows into the next move. The fluidity of each position and each second of the dance has an uninterrupted flow of energy comparable to a never ending ripple. In life, when that last piece falls in place, you will find life's momentum sweeping you to the next move, connecting one moment to the next, adding each experience to another in one fluid motion.
For me, this moment has not yet come. Until then, I close my eyes and remember what I am doing this for. Why I am putting my body in ridiculous inverted positions to fall, why I am working hard in school, why I want to go to Yale, and the answer slides through my lips and rolls off my tongue almost weightless: happiness.
Prompt: You have already told us about yourself in the Common Application, with its list of activities, the Short Answer, and the Personal Essay. While we leave the topic of your second essay entirely up to you, try telling us something about yourself that you believe we cannot learn elsewhere in your application. Please limit yourself to fewer than 500 words.
Essay:
Ask a teenage boy what he fears most. It's not the dark closet in the guest room. It's not the huge Rottweiler next door. It's not the babysitter's cooking. What a teenage boy fears most is dancing with a girl.
Dancing can be a very awkward ritual to first-timers. You'll see all types of strange moves, most bearing the resemblance of a chicken running around without its head. When one is dancing one feels the scrutiny of peers. A small slip can result in poison darts, or worst: gossip.
With this in mind during my freshman year of high school, I embarked on the long and painful journey to learn breakdancing. This is a dance named after the sound of crunching bones, the dislocation of joints, and cold mornings where you wake up sore and broken from the day before.
Picture this: handstands gone awry, my face planting itself into the ground. Or this: headspins that have not found a center of gravity, my arms give out, and send my legs sprawling to the cold floor. Freezes, windmills, and transitions, one slip and I'm back on the ground, all one hundred-thirty pounds of me, rolling on the floor, kicking, cursing, and bleeding.
What I've found in all my seventeen and a half years on Earth is that life is a little like breakdancing. One slip and you can find yourself on the cold floor, cursing and screaming. Some mornings you'll wake up a sore and broken man, not wanting to roll out of bed and face the cold world. Some days you'll want to give up, you forget your dreams, goals, and ambitions. You lose sight of what makes you happy. It is days like these you find yourself in a position similar to a breakdancing freeze: you feel like you are upside down, attempting to balance yourself on your head.
On days like these you need to close your eyes. You need to remember why you are doing this, the ultimate goal. Remember the phrase, "Shoot for the stars so even if you fall you'll land on the clouds." You need to push on. Do that extra push-up, that extra hand stand, hold that position for an extra five seconds. Put in that extra effort, that extra smile, push yourself to be extra-ordinary.
When breakdancing comes together the movements are beautiful. The circular motions, each move's momentum flows into the next move. The fluidity of each position and each second of the dance has an uninterrupted flow of energy comparable to a never ending ripple. In life, when that last piece falls in place, you will find life's momentum sweeping you to the next move, connecting one moment to the next, adding each experience to another in one fluid motion.
For me, this moment has not yet come. Until then, I close my eyes and remember what I am doing this for. Why I am putting my body in ridiculous inverted positions to fall, why I am working hard in school, why I want to go to Yale, and the answer slides through my lips and rolls off my tongue almost weightless: happiness.
