Undergraduate / "beauty is all about looks" - A&M Issue of importance [2]

Choose an issue of importance to you-the issue could be personal, school related, local, political, or international in scope-and write an essay in which you explain the significance of that issue to yourself, your family, your community, or your generation. (This is my first draft.. pretty much the first thing that popped into my mind I typed, so i'm sure it could use some editing! Any opinions would help! I decided last minute to apply to A&M! I can only hope that my last minute essays are enough to at least get me into Blinn team! )

Entering into high school is a life changing, impressionable experience. It's a time in your life where you truly feel like your going somewhere, finally growing up. But for most, its also a very nerve racking experience. The school is ten times bigger, you hardly recognize anyone, and the work seems to be monumentally more challenging. Freshmen often stumble around a bit at first as they try to adapt to higher expectations. In theory, these first year struggles should be a step to learning how to balance responsibilities- something that a parent or teacher could easily offer advice about. But in reality, freshman year is a drastic plunge into the world of judgment.

The locker room was brutal. Stepping foot trough those secret gym doors was like walking into another universe. I was immediately assaulted with the constant hum of gossip and fake laughter. 30 girls were packed into the bathroom, all shoving for a space in front of the mirrors, or an empty socket to plug their blow dryers and staighteners in. Mascara wands and bottles of concealer whirled frantically in front of each girl's plastic face. As soon as one girl, hair fried beyond repair, left, she was replaced by another goopy-lipped, raccoon-eyed Barbie. Before I had entered into this world, I had never been unhappy with my weight, or my big calves, or my deep-set eyes. All of sudden though, nearly everything about everyone was imperfect.

I was able to handle these new pressures of appearance fairly well. I conformed to what the high school society demanded of me in a nonchalant way, choosing to concentrate on my close friends then impressing the masses. My good friend Ashley, however, was no so successful. I soon noticed that she wouldn't eat at lunch. In fact, I never saw her eat at all. She had begun to starve herself so that she would stay skinny. Her weight loss had won her quite a few new male companions, which encouraged her to eat less and less. And finally one day- her body couldn't take it and she ended up in the hospital.

After that terrible day we all vowed to never let someone else affect the way we viewed ourselves. As a senior about to graduate, I can honestly say I have seen no change in the way that people demean each other. If anything, I see that this is almost an epidemic- affecting the physical and even mental health of billions of people throughout the world. There are countless ways that the media influences our self-image. Television and magazines make perfection seem necessary. As many ways as society has found to make us feel insecure about our bodies, it has found even more ways to suck every dollar from our fragile, 'flawed' world. The money making industry has taken the delicate state of our self perception, and twisted us all into something ugly and deformed.

People around the world spend thousands of dollars to "fix" themselves. Women are obsessed with having a perfect body. Botox, breast implants, nose jobs, liposuction; these are only a few things women are willing to have done to their bodies in order to live up to the world's expectations.

Why are people so obsessed with a perfect appearance? I believe that these ridiculously impossible expectations have made our world much more unstable. It breeds life long depression and anxiety into people who could have otherwise put their efforts and goals into actually advancing society. Money and research of new ways to tweak God's creation could have been put into real human needs such as medicine or helping people with true misfortune.

It seems sad that people do this to each other, when each one of us could admit that it has detrimental affects on our self-worth. Life would be a happier place if people could learn to put their energies into loving themselves and accepting others instead of silly high school-esque tribulations. It seems cliché to say that our beauty resides within, but isn't it the epitome of superficial to say that beauty is all about looks?

Undergraduate / A&M app- My twist to the 'person who ifluenced you' essay. your opinion? [3]

Throughout my years in school I have been asked countless times to write a paper about someone who has made an impact in my life. My replies are always awkward and forced, meandering around for that special person in my life that I can boast about. Of course there are certain people who have made a large impression on me- my parents, no doubt. But there is nobody that I can specifically pinpoint and tell a deep, inspirational story about how they changed my life or taught me to view the world differently.

Instead, I feel like every person I have ever met, every experience I have ever gone through, every breathtaking, miraculous sense that my body could perceive, has molded me into the person that I am. As if everything I encounter in the world has added another drop to the concoction that is my subconscious.

I am Music
Deep and flowing rhythms, pushing and grinding against the soul of your inner being. Twisting and weaving and vibrating through the depths
of your body, changing the thumping beat of your heart and taking
over the movement of your limbs.
Pulsing waves of warm energy rushing through every vein and artery, tingles on the tip of your tongue and down your curving spine,
I am what seeing, tasting, feeling sounds like.
The epitome of living, just letting sensation take over

I am not hip hop
Cruel threatening lyrics spitting in your face and drilling shallow words into shallow minds. Reoccurringly uncreative music about sex and drugs; Disrespectful and idiotic words dribbling out of auto tune machines- hyping up untalented and vulgar people, caught in the throws of public image.

I am a thick novel that is still being written
My plot is obscure and indefinite, twisting into a new direction at every turn of a page, endless outcomes and possibilities. Billions of words and thoughts are scribbled in pen. Mistakes are bound to happen but that is what makes the story beautiful. There is no other book like it- no other path unfolding in such a scrambled and confused way, a thickening mystery dripping with every delicious detail and inner thought. Not even the author can control her own scribbled words, erratically fabricating new layers to the story line as they pop rapidly into her minds eye.

I am not a teenage girl's magazine
Droning away about celebrities and gossip, brimming with superficial and inane articles on make up and clothing. Eccentrically vapid delusions about what women should look like and what men want.

I am not a reporter slithering my way into someone's personal life and picking away at their sanity, creating wounds large enough to destroy their life, creating a hollow monster that people ultimately aspire to be.

I am not a thin, floppy magazine void of meaningful thought and reason.

I am a Free and Magnificent Bird
Soaring through the clouds and soaking in the sun's rays of ultimate freedom. My every need is given to me by the earth and my every desire is given to me by my own two wings.

I live on top of the world, my nest overlooking the land below and at the slightest whim I may hop from the branch, fold my wings, and plummet at a dizzying pace towards the hard rock below. There is no fear or worry as I spin like a bullet through the sky; my wings will always save me.

I am filled with an enchanting peace as I sing into the hazy sky, alone and independent and in love with the miracle of living

I am not an earthbound sheep
Shackled to the iron chains of my master's hands. Baaing pitifully as I mindlessly follow the herd into a musty barn.. or off of a cliff.

I am not a mind that does not think on its own, strung together with 50 others, all stupidly munching grass and grains, putting forth very little intelligent thought or desire.

I am not satisfied with an idle life of grazing, ambling around without purpose, copying others instead of following my own will.

I am the Ocean
My depths reaching into the unknown depths, containing mysteries yet to be discovered. My waves are crashing and swirling- sometimes gentle soothing swells, rocking the sailor's boat like a baby in the womb- sometimes violent and terrifying, 100 foot walls of ice water, daggers crashing against cliffs, gripping the sandy beaches by the skinny white legs and dragging them down..down..down.

I am the ocean that contains sharks with deadly teeth, slimy eels that
viciously tear flesh and creatures in the deepest waters that are unimaginable and alien-like.
I am also the ocean that bursts of every color of the rainbow, glorious shining scales from ruby red and beaming yellow fish. Coral and wondrous plants of dazzling purple and blue sway with the current, and dolphins twirl playfully through the crystal sea.

I am the ocean that is abundant with secret upon secret that will never quite be discovered, always just out of ones desperately reaching fingertips,

My own mystified grasp

I am not a pond
Stagnant and evaporating, disappearing slowly but surely into oblivion, leaving a small empty crater in the ground of stinking, rotting mud. Flies swarming around the dead minnows I leave behind.

I am not a pond that is there one day and gone the next- brought to life so momentarily by such a greater force; and then drifting away, forgotten and unused. Nothing but a temporary puddle of murky liquid, too shallow to hold any dark secrets or undiscovered beauty.

I am a mushroom
Growing in the forest, my colorful cap warning of a poisonous toxin. Sometimes the brave dare to test my powerful effect on the mind and they are astounded at my abilities. The mind twists and turns into a vibrating, melting world of color. The trees grow taller and the leaves unfold into beautiful doves that spread their wings and flutter away.

The ground sinks away and the imagination is completely unbound by the chains of realism. I am another layer of the mind unraveling into a different perception of reality. There are no limits to what I may think or comprehend.

Deep Fascination and intense awareness.

I am not an oak tree
My enormous roots buried into the ground for hundred of years, unable to move or discover, my very center of life inhibiting me to fully experience it.

I am not an oak tree that is climbed and beaten by children or axed away by powerful and threatening men.
I could never be unmoving and unchanging, limited to the length my branches can stretch, standing still for eternity and never knowing what is beyond sight.

As it is with everything in life. People, places, experiences; they are all constantly influencing my ever changing flow of character. To write about a single person and how they encouraged me to study hard, or to help the less fortunate, would be an utter lie. Life itself is the most influential thing in my life- affecting my every belief and approach. If you ultimately require a specific for the purpose of this essay, you could maybe call it God; if God means (i have to think up a REAL good sentence for this... on ssecond thought.. should i not even go there?)