Writing Feedback /
"New Soil" - a college essay about heinies, aliens, and rasberry jam. [3]
I'd really appreciate it if you could look over this and give some constructive feedback! It is not an answer to any specific prompt, or aimed towards a specific school. My English teacher was a bit confused about who exactly is speaking in the first paragraph - what do you think, is it too confusing? If yes, any ideas as to what I could do to make it better? Thank you!
New Soil"Smith, James; Johnson, Mary; Williams, John; Jones, Patricia; Brown, Robert; and...umm..." You lift your eyes from the paper and scan the room, as if hoping to find clues from the blank faces staring back at you. Jones, Patricia coughs, and Williams, John's chin looks alarmingly heavy. Korhonen. It seems to contain way too many syllables to fit in anyone's mouth in one try, and gets a thick, squiggly, red underline whenever typed on a computer. What about that first name then? Hin...hene...e...hi....What? "I'm sorry, could you please pronounce your name for me?" you ask with a smile of rigid politeness. Yes, I could. It's "hey-nee." Wait... what were you thinking? Finns might have invented Saunas and share the home to oddities from wife-carrying competitions to ice swimming and Santa Claus (no, he does NOT live on the North Pole), but no, we generally do not go around naming our children buttocks (shush... Fanny is an exception).
Four hundred and six days ago, small-talk was a non-existent term for me. People would walk up to me hollering "how are you," and in the midst of an intense story of how I ran around with my camera in the rain, am in the process of growing a pineapple plant, and was so tired that morning that I spread organic raspberry jam on my eggs, I would suddenly notice that the inquirer has already moved on and could care very little of all that I had confessed. Not until after several weeks of careful observing did the truth hit me; the true meaning of those three words has much more to do with politeness than a hope of knowing how I truly feel - not many expect anything more than an I'm-good-and-you, in some cases followed by a few words about either the weather or how dreadfully stressful wrestling college applications is. On a visit back to Finland I realized just how much America I had managed to inhale; I created chains of confused faces by smiling at strangers, and made even my closest friends roll their eyes by constantly asking how they are.
I might have learned the use of "just kidding" and "I know, right," can pull off a holler of "SENIORS" and comprehend the concept of "swag," but truth is, I'm still an alien. The unofficial uniform of yoga pants and fluffy slippers still makes me cringe, and I still pedal my way to school on a white Jopo. I still feel like home near the sea and beneath trees, and I still find smacking each other with birch whisks in a tiny room of two hundred degrees quite ordinary. I still take my shoes off the minute I step into a house, and still celebrate Christmas a day early. I still look for the lucky almond in my rice porridge, and I still secretly believe in Mid-Summer Night's magic. Every day I take a step closer to mastering the rules of being an American, but this doesn't have to mean yanking out my roots - it's more about lifting them up and carefully planting them in new soil.
