Undergraduate / Impact Essay-Alan Brinkley [7]

Hey guys I wrote this essay for the Common App topic of someone who has impacted your life. I would really really appreciate any comments you have, especially as to whether I got my point across well. I'm considering just scrapping the whole essay and redoing it, but I figured I'd let y'all have a chance to pick it apart first! Thanks in advance, I really do appreciate it!

At Westwood High School, a school renowned for its intense academics and incredibly smart student body, there is only one class that strikes fear into the hearts of the most hardened of bookworms. AP U.S. History, otherwise known as "APUSH", is known as GPA suicide. Just mention the term and you'll have a group of people reiterating their personal accounts of sleepless nights and failed tests. For some reason, I decided this would be a fun way to spend my junior year.

When you decide to embark on such a treacherous journey, you are equipped with three main tools. A pen with which to scribble copious amounts of notes, a binder to keep those notes in, and most important of all, Alan Brinkley's 1,056 page American History: A Survey. Alan Brinkley and I were destined to be very close friends by the end of the year, even if he never knew it.

Up until this point, I had always occupied a strange niche at school. I had been in "Talented and Gifted" classes since the second grade so that put me in the nerd pile. But I was also blonde and an athlete, and in a school where a high percentage of the kids in advanced classes were of Asian descent, I stuck out. I had never identified a true "gift" besides making a ball curve as it crossed the plate. My classes all blended together, becoming more of a chore than a true interest. So at the end of my sophomore year when my social studies teacher told me I had a true "talent" for history, I dismissed her. How could someone be talented at history? It was just reading a book and answering questions, right?

Alan Brinkley taught me otherwise. As I walked around Westwood carrying my book, I became part of the cult, those crazy enough to attempt APUSH. I had a true identity for the first time; I was an "APUSHer". I remember with joy posting witty American history related Facebook statuses, anticipating the "likes" from my new friends from class. At night I rushed through the rest of my homework just to be able to crack open Brinkley's work. Every time I read a section I was amazed at the humor infused throughout what was an apparently dry textbook. I was truly engaged in the material, it forced me to think and I loved it. But it wasn't just the fact I had finally found a class I truly enjoyed going to everyday, I had found a subject that I seemed to completely understand. The kids sitting next to me could without a doubt solve an equation faster then me, but I was the one they came to whenever they needed help distinguishing between Radical Reconstruction and Presidential Reconstruction. To me it was just a manner of analyzing people and their circumstances; it was a big story, one with no ending.

My experience with Brinkley came to a head as the AP test ended and the entire gym broke out into a thunderous round of applause. Outside the gym door awaited last years APUSH finishers forming a big tunnel congratulating us on our final feat. In that moment, the year culminated into one big realization "you can't escape history" (as written on our commemorative pencils). Thanks Mr. Brinkley.