Undergraduate / "Tasting the Detested". Common App Essay [4]

Hey guys, so I'm a desperate individual applying...can someone read over and critique my essay; thanks in advance!

As a first grader, I became an agent for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

My friend had eaten roasted lamb. I called her "AN ANIMAL KILLER!" After being a solid vegetarian from birth, eating meat was the equivalent of animal slaughter; I even questioned why eating meat wasn't against the law.

But after seeing my friends gobbling chicken nuggets for six years, curiosity took over. And then the essential question formed, the question which changed my intellectual understanding forever:

"What does chicken taste like?"

The overall response was disappointing:

"It tastes good...like CHICKEN!"

Finally I accepted the inevitable. At a graduation party I placed a piece of chicken, (in my eyes a potato with various vegetables and a bone sticking out), on my plate. Yet I could not bring myself to bite the chicken off the bone. My mind said, "Yes" but my body said, "No." Finally, I dumped the chicken out, earning a lecture from my parents about food waste.

I no longer put chicken on my plate from that day forward. Yet I continued to wonder. Then finally my mom seemed to resolve the issue: "Food Stop is selling vegetarian chicken!"

My mouth watered as the "chicken" heated in the oven. I would know the answer...finally! But as it entered my mouth, all I tasted was soy, none of the "good" flavor everyone described. I turned to the ingredients list; in letters small enough for the human eyes to discern was the word "SOYBEANS."

Despite the persistent wondering, I knew I would never know the taste of chicken in my lifetime. However, there were other foods, some of which brought me the same joy chicken had brought my friend. My mother's soft and sweet chocolate chip cookies for example, the ones I had known since I was born.

"Mom!" I yelled, "can you help me make cookies?"

"No," she said, "you need to learn how to make them yourself."

Annoyed, I gathered the ingredients and started mixing. After the cookies baked, I took one bite and recoiled. The cookie was so bland and salty that it was clearly not a cookie. But despite this, I realized I was getting at something; perhaps I could discover the impossible.

I slowly morphed from the pig into the cook. Even though I wasn't making all the meals in the household, I started to use my hands more often than my stomach. From secretly sampling food to cutting up the vegetables, I began to understand where it all comes from.

And one day it finally hits me. Taste is all about perception. We taste what we want to taste. Maybe that's why no one could describe chicken to me.

So now I know what chicken tastes like--without tasting it. To me, chicken will always be my mother's mouth-watering, spicy vegetable rice.
And perhaps it's not all about listening to other people and blindly taking in their facts; maybe I need to discover these things for my own.