Undergraduate / "an English major" - Bowdoin Supplemental Essay [4]

Bowdoin College is my top-choice school, so I want to make this essay just right. It feels too general, or perhaps too formal. Anyone willing to edit would be graciously appreciated.

Prompt: Bowdoin is a liberal arts college that is unusually vibrant intellectually. Some students enter Bowdoin with a clear commitment to a particular course of study; others come considering a broader range of academic possibilities while seeking the intellectual path that most excites them. What all students will share is exposure to the breadth and depth the Bowdoin curriculum provides. Describe what you expect your academic journey at Bowdoin to include. (Suggested length 250 to 500 words.)

Essay:

I had never fully voiced my opinion of the ethics of death, love, and human sexuality before in the classroom. As a student I had been like a sponge, soaking in information my teachers taught me. Yet here I was, fiercely debating the subjects with my teacher and my small Honors Ethics class. Though it had been only a half-year class, there was something about it that lit a spark in me like no other course had. I was free to voice my opinion, to defend that opinion and bolster that opinion and make myself an individual higher thinker. I was a teacher as my teacher was and my classmates were. We worked in an environment free from restriction, where we the students were experts equal to the teacher. We were not scolded about sins - we discussed things together as a class, and everyone's opinion mattered. We enjoyed ourselves and found our own matter of ethics. We lived life on a level higher than that of a regular class. We actually learned, not facts or data, but life. We learned life.

As a perspective Bowdoin student, I anticipate that I will encounter that same kind of learning on my academic journey there. During both my visits to the college, students and admissions officers have stressed over and over the idea of an all-powerful community spirit that hovers over the hearts of all people who teach and learn at Bowdoin. I believe that this spirit must apply not only to commitment to community service but also the learning and academic facets of the Bowdoin life. At Bowdoin, I expect that I will be free to voice my opinion or join my opinion with others'. There will be opportunities to both learn and teach. This circle of discovery of higher knowledge is a rarity among colleges and is why I have chosen Bowdoin as my top choice school.

The core motivation behind the college lies in serving the "common good" and helping students help other people. This high motive of service fosters both a strong intellectual ability and an open heart that applies that ability. During my academic journey, I intend to adopt this idea and assimilate into its character.

The emphasis on the importance of every student as a part of the whole somewhat redefines my current view of education. Where in the past I had thought that education was all about absorbing as much information as I could, I now understand that I have an obligation to tie that information together and give back by developing higher thinking based upon that facts I had learned. I also understand now that learning is a joint effort. I believe that Bowdoin embodies this ideal. Unlike any other college I am applying to, Bowdoin will grant me the ability to give back what I take from the school. This, more than anything, renders the college as my top choice.

Undergraduate / "Some questions cannot be answered." - Princeton Supplemental Essay [2]

This prompt is a little weird. So my essay is a little weird. It's got more voice to it than my normal college essays. It's more a personal narrative and less an essay. Do you think the style is appropriate for a supplemental essay or is it worth rewriting? Thanks for all your concrit in advance.

Prompt: Using the quotation below as a jumping off point, tell us about an event or experience that helped you define one of your values or changed how you approach the world:

''Some questions cannot be answered./ They become familiar weights in the hand,/ Round stones pulled from the pocket, unyielding and cool.''

-Jane Hirshfield, poet, Princeton Class of 1973
Essay:

I keep holding onto this irrational fear of leaving my home. It's December now, and I wonder where all the time went. I asked someone about a year ago, about where all the time in the summer had disappeared to, and he responded, "That way," pointing to the left. It was worth the laugh. But even now I still think about it. Why am I so afraid of time and change? Why am I so afraid of endings? It doesn't matter where the time went, but where the time is going. And the time is going away. Time is always going away, and it always moves forward. I wonder if I should too.

So all this insecurity has stayed with me throughout my senior year-that is until one random Saturday this month I spent with two of my friends. My high school holds a holiday party for a Brockton, MA elementary school each year. Seniors pair up in twos or threes and are assigned one or two grade school kids, whom they then get to splurge on by buying lots of holiday gifts. That Saturday, my friends and I went out to Target and then came back to my house to wrap gifts.

I don't have that great a skill of gift-wrapping, so the friend that did wrapped all the box-shaped gifts. That left me and my other friend to dream up some ingenious way to wrap a kickball. It goes without saying that round objects should not be wrapped in paper; any logical person would just stuff it in a gift bag and call it a day. Yet we didn't. We found a way to tape paper the entire way around the ball and then fold up the sides. After we were done, it looked rather horrible. We broke out laughing anyway.

In that moment when we were reveling in our (lack of) present-wrapping prestige, a huge wave of ridiculous joy surged within me. Here we were, guffawing at how awful we were at something, and suddenly I had reached a state of complete and utter contentment. There was something surely wrong with me.

Yet thinking about it afterwards, I realized something: I'm afraid of time's passage because I fear the loss of ridiculous moments such as that. But I kept thinking. I came understand-and this understanding was one of those lightening moments of enlightenment that rocks you to the core, you've got to comprehend that-that as time would always march forward, that moment in time would always stand still. It would stay me. No matter how far time had ventured, I could still experience the utter bliss of that second. Memories don't hold you back. They push you ahead and give you a little something of home to hold onto. Having that little golden nugget-though once it was a "cold and unyielding stone"-curled up in my back pocket, I know I can find the power to keep walking down the long road ahead.

Undergraduate / 'working at Dunkin' Donuts' - commonapp essay [NEW]

I literally just finished this and condensed it to exactly 500 words. It was originally 650ish words--do you think it's worth going with the extra length or keeping it at this brief length? Also, any advice would be fantastic. Thanks in advance for reading/critiquing/helping.

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The first time I heard my boss sing was strange. Normally the radio played over the speakers, echoing the musical history of my childhood. "The songs I grew up with," a coworker my age commonly remarked; the '90s soft rock and pop songs were as much hers as mine. Yet when I arrived at 6:45am, ready to serve coffee so the world could wake up while I longed for sleep, my boss' voice carried over noisy customers and coffee grinders. He hummed pleasantly while bearing a tray of donuts over workers' heads, replenishing not only pastries but passion as well. His simple contentment invigorated us like wildfire.

The sounds of a shift at Dunkin' Donuts differ from typical assumptions. Coffee brewed noisily and alarms buzzed. Often a frustrated palm slapped the sugar dispenser, begging the machine to please work today. Once, when I failed to make the dispenser function, a coworker came over and wordlessly slammed it with the heel of her palm. 'That is how you do it,' her eyes declared.

The violent strength of my coworkers and I surprised customers. We banged with irritation on the hot chocolate containers, spreading powder evenly throughout. We whacked coin rolls on the counter, chopping the paper-and-metal cylinders in half. We swept away crumbs and torn napkins at a ferocious pace, clearing the floor in minutes. While we behaved cheerily for customers, we took out anger in a gratifying bam or clang. We were pleased and angered as one; customers elicited the same responses from us. We became a family teaching each other something about human cooperation.

As one my coworkers' musical voices enticed my ears-many conversed in Portuguese, and I fought to understand through my knowledge of Spanish. Comprehension of their quick conversations grew the longer I worked. Soon those same voices addressed me animatedly, and I soaked in their accents, secretly loving the purring rumble of rolled r's. They became familiar voices, no longer the Portuguese I had imagined hostile in my first month. I learned to appreciate these fascinating people who had made a life in America.

About half the staff spoke Portuguese; the rest were English speakers, either students like myself or thirty-something women. Their voices narrated heartbreaking tales of alcoholism, divorce, and financial troubles; yet they spoke with nonchalant contentment. Though struggling they held on, reduced to selling coffee alongside seventeen-year-olds.

Before ever working at Dunkin' Donuts, I thought of the place in odors-pungent coffee, warm bagels and muffins, steamy lattes. Now, though, I identify it through sound-not quarters clinking into tip jars or cash registers ringing merrily, but workers moving in unison, their diverse voices serving, judging, and telling the stories of their lives. I think of a deep conversation with my boss about my future after giving my two-week's notice. I think of myself, promising to return next summer. I think of happiness despite hardship, and I wonder if I can live as contently as someone who serves coffee for a living.