Undergraduate / From the stage to my life - Commonapp Essay,do you think it's boring or trite? [6]

Hey guys,really need advices,submitting it in two days!Here's the prompt:Evaluate a significant experience.

From the stage to my life

I walked from the back stage to the front with all the others as music resonated in the big studio,huge spotlights flashed on high in the ceiling,and the avid audience clapped an overwhelming wave of cheering towards us.Everyone was wearing a smile when the eight cameras promptly drifted by.Heart pounding,blood boiling,I could almost visualize me facing the audience of the nation one month later when it was broadcast on ****.In this moment of exaltation,I was slowly engulfed by a feeling of nostalgia and entered the kaleidoscope of memory.

How time flied,it felt like yesterday when I was only a little boy,lying on the floor in front the television waiting for the show.My mouth was open wide at all these incredible kids with the same black hair speaking fluently in an another language.It was 2001,when I started to learn English.I once had the fantasy to walk into a famous Institute and take the most expensive courses or to fly to the United States and stay in a wealthy relative's house,but my only option was to do it myself,with the help of those books and CDs purchased by my dad who specially made a trip to Wuhan.Every day I was required to study 1 hour in any way I liked,reading,speaking to myself or even singing,half in the morning and half in the evening.Not long,because my dad said he never wanted his son to get tired or bored and I could study longer if I wanted.I shall always be full of life doing anything.I loved this way of learning.Flipping the pages of the dictionary I would try to divine every word and how they unify to convey a meaning.As neither of my parents could utter more than a few sentence fragments for eight years I've beening learning on my own.My dad,however,simply hoped that one day I may be able to be able to translate a few words in the NBA live games which he really enjoyed.To me,it was a joy to laugh or shed tears with story characters like Alice in wonderland and Black Beauty,then as I grew older,it was to probe a totally different culture.In 2009,this national competition for the first time set a sub-division in SuiZhou and I thought it would be a perfect chance to test my several years of efforts.Much to my unexpectedness,I magically went through the **** Final to ****,to Beijing,at last to the very final of the top 20.It took a miracle to pass seven rounds of competition and to defeat hundreds of thousands of other contestants,including those who had been pre-admitted to top universities of the country.

The winding path of thoughts came to a halt when the music suddenly stopped and I was gently elbowed by the girl beside me signaling that we all move to the waiting section as the introduction was over.Everyone watched in silence when other contestants made their speech,fortunately I was not among the first ones to go.As I listened,the previous rapture was gradually substituted by a sense of chagrin.The stories they quoted of their travel to a list of countries provoked a mixture of enviness and depression and pricked my keenly sensible nerve reminding me that my whole life had only been revolving around one city,one small undeveloped city in the middle of China.I recalled the minute I was greeted by a ShangHai girl who inquired where my home town was as she really liked my guitar performance,"SuiZhou,"I said with much uncertainty if she had heard of it,"SuZhou?".Obviously she was bewildered and I had to explain that it was a city in Hubei province.In the hotel room,my situation was even worse,there was no chance of interposing a comment on any event they ardently enumerated,modeling the UN conference,summer camping in America,touring the HongKong Disneyland.I was screaming inside,why wasn't I bestowed a good family background with loads of opportunities!I nearly wallowed in the mire when perhaps the excessive tension of nerves evoked a sudden epiphany.I have lived the life of most kids in the undeveloped area but now I am the only one standing on this stage utilizing the same few facilities available in the hundreds of cities of the undeveloped areas of China.Moreover,I am the few of them who strives to make full use of all the chances.My city does not boast a society of cultural diversity but in the top middle school and high school which could afford to employ several native speakers,I have made friends with at least ten foreign teachers from America,Australia,England,New Zealand,Canada and South Africa.On weekends they would invite some kids to visit them and held parties and I could chat with a black guy and a white lady simultaneously,experiencing a collision of drastic different perspectives,shaping me into a more multi-cultured person.The apartment had metamorphosed into a window I crept upon to catch a glance of the world.Moreover,I could debate vociferously with the members of another school physics league on the problem of probablity,I could take charge of my class as monitor and arrange all the issues on the school sports-meeting,I could be playing a rock song on the school art festival,I could even conduct experiments with my dad at home using several bottle of chemicals and test tubes bought from a local drug store.Living in a small city might have prevented me from joining the international student meetings,but it doesn't limit my dreams of becoming a musician,an anthroplogist or a chemist.The small community can equally prepare me for my future life in a big context.

"Now let's welcome contestant *** from ***!",I heard the host announcing my name and stepped onto the center stage.The powerful light beams from every direction at once focused on me,dazzling my eyes.I tried hard to smile at the blurred images of the nationally renowned judges and the audience.Then,gradully as if hallucinated,I vaguely perceived a distant small figure of me growing while running avidly from the past to the present.He loomed large before me,then like a bolt of lightning,flashed past and darted away towards the future to embrace a world of opportunities along with all the risks and uncertainties.

Undergraduate / An Accident - Yale supplement, is effective to convey a sense of adventure? [4]

Yale supplement requires me to submit another essay that could be anything I like,do you think it is boring or bland?Waiting for replies.

An Accident
Bang!And there I was,crouching on the ground in great agony while watching my skateboard shooting straight forward.I lifted my left arm.It was numb and a little twisted,apparantly it was fractured inside and my performance of the new trick kickflip was a failure.Soon some kids in the playground came around and helped carried my skateboard as we walked back to the classroom.I thought I could bend it back by myself in a minute but I was wrong,it didn't look good and I had to leave the school to consult a doctor.So frightened,mom and dad dragged me into a cab and hurried the driver to speed to the most famous local osseous doctor,a rather old man with great skill in curing fractures in a traditional,chinese way.The old man took my drooping arm and pressed here and there deftyly with his fingers.Head holding up and eyes squinting to concentrate,he soon pinpointed the problem."Lie on the bed,son.You guys hold his limbs and don't let him kick or struggle."He placed his order at once.The next few minutes felt like the longest surgery I have ever experienced.I kept screaming and somehow managed to repress the inclination to struggle while he was bending my hand slowly but with considerable strength.After a little while of excruciating shrieking,I was fixed.He plastered my arm and told me very seriously that I would have to experience one month like the disabled.

Next day I went to school with an arm wrapped up in white.The whole class burst to laughter when I appeared at the door and exclaimed it was the best April Fool's day ever.What a coincidence!In school I became the most eye-catching object,there seemed to be hundreds of pairs of eyes on me wherever I went.I didn't really try to truly understand my decision to pick up this sport until that day.

On holidays when I was alone I used to read books,play guitar,do math puzzles or surf on the web.Nearly two years ago,I suddenly realized that I had stepped into the stage of a big teenager and none of my hobbies could consume all the extra ATPs.I was so restless.Accidentally I watched the X-games and marveled at all the stunts performed on a tiny piece of wood.Then in the winter of 2007,skateboard came to my life.It was portable,cheap and most importantly,it had thousands of tricks for me to conquer or even invent so theoretically I would never get bored.I was easily addicted to this enchanting board of uncertainties.Nobody played it here before,so I bought one from the internet and learned by the mere videos on youtube,it was good to understand English.Then for part of my leisure time I was alone under the shade of a huge tree on the quiet narrow streets downstairs,jumping more than two hundred times to learn a new trick.Beads of sweat formed streams on my face,my chest,flooding everywhere before soaking me completely and every once a while there was a remark floating past my ear,"this kid sure toils hard!"

After this accident some friends kindly offered their advices that I quit for this extreme sport had so a high a probablity of injuries.However,I was aware of it at the beginning.I never had any tendency for self-injuring.In fact,I just wanted to push myself a little further,to meet a new challenge,I could well justify the deed of vegging out in front of a TV that I had been working hard in school on weekdays.But I only intended to do all the things for fun and to prove myself,mentally and physically.And I do admire those who would not get satisfied with a easy life.Mountain climbers,astronaumers,and scientists.Benjamin Franklin even experimented with a kite to prove that lightning was electricity.The love for science overcame the fear of death.For me at least I could try something new and adventurous,to feel the wind whistled by when I ollied up to the air and temporarily liberated myself from the restrictions of earth. .

Two months later when I picked up my board again all my friends gave up their hopes of convincing me.I started again,jumped another two hundred times before mastering the very trick that had given me a bone fracture.You can imagine my great rapture when I catched the board in the air and landed on the ground steadily.Now,as a matter of fact,skateboard has become a useful bridge to make friends with daredevils like me.Occasionally when I was performing on the street a teenager would stop me to ask me to be his teacher.After half a year we have even started a small club of our own,with the motto,"Take a risk and have fun"..

Undergraduate / Challenging the Impossible - Any one check my commonapp essay for Harvard [3]

Evaluate a significant experience and its impact on you.

Challenging the Impossible

"I made it this time!After seven rounds of competition,from my hometown SuiZhou to Hubei province,to the National Final and then to the the stage of CCTV 10 to be broadcast nation-wide.I have learnt so much and made so many friends from across the whole China!"I was meditating in ecstasy after boarding the train at the end of this great journey to go home.All the efforts finally paid out.

Being one of the top 20 to appear on CCTV is the dream I promised myself 3 years ago.On hearing this huge ambition,some close friends encouraged me but most kids sneered at it."Dump idiot,he ain't even know who he is,living in such a small town like SuiZhou,how are you gonna compete with all the other kids from Beijing or Shanghai plus many other metropolitan cities?","hell yeah,most of them have even been abroad for several years,not a good idea to compete with them in speaking English".True indeed,when I first started to learn English,there were no big English-teaching Institudes like the New Oriental(even if there is one,we couldn't afford it anyway),my parents couldn't utter more than a few sentences and I don't even have relatives out of this city.But my father was a man of vision to encouraged his son to learn by himself,and,soon enough,he bought some English books and CDs from Wuhan,the capital city of Hubei Province.Confronted with such a huge task,a mammoth task indeed,and I was fortunate to be only 9,too small to be frightened,what I still recall is the repeated words of my father,"English is a crucial language tool to help you make a qualified international talent,go for it,son!"And I started,every day I would study 1 hour,half in the morning and half in the evening.Flipping the pages of the dictionary I would try to divine every word and how they unify to convey a meaning.For eight years I've beening doing just like this.It's simple,just read and guess,as many have put it,but I have persisted.

Although most people regard my achievement as solely mastering another language but I gained definitely more than that:the new angle to look at this world and to understand what life truly means,the methods I invented for self learning,and,most importantly,the pleasure and passion of striving for the best,all the things derived from this self-learning process!

I've learned that there are discrepancies in values held by the two cultures but none could provide the principle you should completely stick to thus turning to a insular,self-righteous bigot.We should,however,be clear that the values act only as guidance and are only right under certain circumstances.

I've learned that when a theorem is explained in a particular language,it doesn't always convey its content perfectly accurate because every word represents many meanings so one may interpret it in different ways.I could gain a more profound understanding by finding the intersection of different languages.

I've learned that there could be a variety of approaches to address a problem,how to organise the knowledge,how to create rules of your own instead of just reciting the book,how to change the angle you look at a problem in order to find new approaches.All the experience I have accumulated could be applied to academic studies or even improving my skateboarding skills!I love to apply rules of my own to every part of my life!

Throughout the years I have formed the belief that I can work anything out if I just do it,which makes me intrigued by the problems that others had never attempted or have tried but failed.Confronted with the hard math problem,I rarely admitted defeat.After having failed to solve it with an equation,I would draw its graph on a coordinate system to find some clue and then generalize the conclusion.Be there some phenomena that don't seem to make sense unless you use the Newton's Laws or other theories,I would try to reconstruct the scene when the scientist first discovered the law and all the general background behind so as to truly understand it and also learn the method he used to explore the world.

Several months ago,after I had finished the 1500m long run as the representative of my class in the school sports meeting,many classmates gathered round me:"Hey,Zhao,you were amazing,you rank 5th out of the 37 contestants!Most of us wouldn't even be able to finish this long distance,and your left arm isn't fully recovered from the injury that had broken it.You are crazy!"I,exhausted and giddy,was happy to tell them:"Perhaps that's just me,perhaps I just love to challenge and I made it!"