Undergraduate /
"A story with no conflict at all" - Stanford SOP [7]
Stanford SOP : Personal Essay : Topic of you choice.I really need an opinion on my essay!! My mother said she didn't like it, but she can't come up with a way on how I can improve it. Do let me know if it's interesting or boring! I need suggestions on the ideas developed in the essay!Has there ever been a story written in which there has been no conflict at all? I've always wondered if I would ever find a story like that. Maybe even if I did, it would be excruciatingly cheerful and downright predictable, and boring. Even the utopian "fairytales" nearly always begin with lovely girls being trapped in towers or being mistreated by their step-sisters. In fact, if I actually look down to it, the best stories of time possibly have the worst situations to be dealt with.
I remember the time when I was in a considerably knotty situation. I was in my eleventh grade - the time when things and you had to get really serious. It was a year in which we had to give board examinations (state/national level examinations) as our finals. Having done well in exams for the past ten years, people began telling me they were expecting me to top the school this time. Having done well in exams for the past ten years, I, too, had arrogantly assumed the task to be easy. I became fairly lax in my study habits and thought I could somehow manage wonders in the last moment. In the last moment, however, the most unexpected turn of events surprised me. Or rather, shocked me.
For starters, my aunt said she had enrolled me for a local beauty contest for the fun of it. I had been hoping to study during this period of time, not participate in competitions I was reluctant to take part in. But this wasn't so much of a problem.
The next issue was a project my friends intended to do. I had already given their Christmas Charity Party a miss. I agreed to do the project and signed up for it. The project was on environmental science and involved considerable work. Deep down, I felt I was losing valuable time that I could use for studying, but this wasn't a big deal either.
The biggest issue that I thought would put a full-stop to all of my activities was that I came down with chicken pox.
"Why now?" - I constantly asked anyone I got to see once in a while. For nearly a month and a half I was bed-ridden. It was not the infection that was giving me the real pains. What did give me real pains was the question that kept coming back to me - "How on earth am I going to cope up with all the classes I'm missing and when will I get the time to study?" There was hardly much time left for the finals.
In my bed-ridden state, I began thinking I needed to prioritize. Chicken pox during a beauty pageant? Oh, the irony. There was no way I was going participate in the beauty contest. It was to begin two days after I caught the infection.
I could not back out of the project. I had after all signed my name for it. So I called up my friends and volunteered to do the funding for the project, and buy the materials they needed for it. I made lists of the materials and gave them to my mother to buy them. Without her help, I don't know what I would have done.
As for the finals, I could only begin studying once I was fully recovered. There was no other go for it.
Once I got out of bed and was completely healthy, I wasted no time. I began collecting the notes I missed and stayed for extra hours at school clarifying doubts from the teachers. I was troubled to see all the others students way ahead of me. I prepared day and night, and was extremely nervous before the exam despite having almost covered the entire portion. The exam day came and went. When the results were out, I noticed I had not topped my school but had come school second. I was fairly disappointed at first and was taken aback when people began congratulating me. The fact that I had come second in school despite having had chicken pox made an exceptionally good story among my friends and family. Sure the experience made a good story, but I also learned things from it. I always knew that a stitch in time saved nine and that it was never a good thing to take your intelligence for granted, but this experience made me realize what these morals actually meant.
"The best stories of time possibly have the worst situations to be dealt with." This was just a good story. I'm waiting for the best stories of my life.