Undergraduate /
'Rap is not a red light' - Common App Essay [2]
My CommonApp Essay. Please make comments on how to improve it and make it more about me and make me a strong candidate. Also how can I shorten this essay to 500 words?
In a dark room, the only thing shining was my iPod. I shut down my computer after seeing my grades down to unprecedented levels. With blank eyes that lost focus, I went through another day with rap. But it has been some time since rap has been precluded entry to my ears. Hopelessly shrieking is my mind, which is squeezed by the clouds of negativity and uncertainty that had solidified into a huge boulder that blocks out any idea, any sort of information from entering into my body: the ears, eyes, mouth, nose, and nerves. Overwhelming stress has led my senses to defy me.
I was pulling my hair. I was shouting for fortitude. I was scrubbing my head vigorously. I could feel it - the energy drifting away from the center of my bone marrows - pulling out the lively pink color from my skin. I was lost. Feelings of uncertainty about the future, frustration of losing my objective, regrets about procrastination and laziness in the past, have tormented me from every side.
My brain was about to rupture. Hands were running across the desk like madmen, groping for the pencil. Then, for the paper. Hastily and spontaneously, I scribbled down and blasted out a torrent of random information that read:
I'm young, but my feet are heavy
The word "despair" keeps me from being happy
I hate this world, I just hate everything
But what I only do is just procrastinating.
It doesn't fit what I used to be, so the rhymes are out of sync. I needed to release them. I needed to kick out the negatives. It was also an incomplete lyric, so I decided to search for more insights into my e89yui9yuiuge. Then I found "youth in a box" by a Korean rapper The Quiett in my iPod. The background which was set in low, melancholy tone matched the overall atmosphere inside of me, but the soothing lyrics and the soft, slightly high-pitched melody kissed me as it swept over gently in my inner ear
I was enlightened. I was revived. I wanted to write more of my own lyrics.
Using all my pocket money, I bought a cheap microphone, plugged it into my laptop the day I decided to record it. It was hard making decent rap music. Starting at midnight after finishing all my make-up homework, I almost stayed up until dawn, recording again and again, trying to make the best out of my first "Jeffrey's song". Surprisingly, I was never tired of erasing the unsatisfactory works and recording a new version. At that moment I realized that there was a breakthrough for the gloominess I had been inside for past couple months.
After I finished recording it, I uploaded my song on the soundcloud right away. I hoped my friends not to be so cynical. However, the responses were unexpectedly enthusiastic; they said "your song says what I wanted to say!" Those words really brought me up, so I started to write more lyrics. This time, I was writing with more positive words.
The more I wrote lyrics people sympathized with, the less I felt isolated and depressed. I even won a second place in the talent show, singing a song complaining about the condition of our school lunch!
In retrospect, it surely was a hard time for me getting out of the gloominess. However, it is also clear that this experience gave me something more than agony. It gave me courage to fight back and speak up, and a motivation to rise back up whenever I fall into gloominess. I still write my lyrics these days, trying hard to show my everyday message to the people who are listening to my song.
Now, Rap is not a red light that reminds me of life's difficulties, no, not anymore. It's my antidote, my shelter, and my green light that adds the element of positivity.
I look at my notebook that holds all the lyrics I've written. From front to back, it is a continuum of emotions, starting with the melancholy and ending with determination and hope. Now I need to write another lyric, but my rap notebook is full. I guess I'll erase my very first rap lyric. The space in my notebook is not enough to include the past tense. Right now, every rap I write is in either the present or the future tenses. While I'm writing it, I smile.
