Writing Feedback / 'The America inside me' - Essay [2]

The America inside me

4 AM. The plane landed, and in just a few minutes we were already walking in the Washington Airport. Thousands of people were moving along, with suitcases, happy faces, and sometimes sad expressions. There were forty of us (all wearing long, blue T-shirts), all winners of the FLEX scholarship that offered us an amazing opportunity: one year in America. I mean...one year in America! It may sound strange, but for us, some teenagers coming from Ex-Soviet countries, it was a dream come true. That kind of dream that you wait to happen, and when it does, you get a quite strange feeling: you become aware that it was part of you even before you started dreaming.

The adventure finally started. It all came fast and suddenly: a new school, new classmates, new classes, a sister from Pakistan. All the things that I knew before fell in the shadow of the ones that I discovered with naive, pure curiosity. Peanut butter, American politics, Star Wars, Halloween, Thanksgiving...Day by day, it all became familiar. Taking the yellow bus to school wasn't scary any more, and I was actually enjoying not wearing uniform. I fell in love with Spanish, and taught my classmates Russian during breaks. Their funny, precious accent always cheered me up, no matter what. I learned the team spirit of the American sports, discovered Boston and New York City, and, for the first time, started thinking and dreaming in English. My 17 year old self went through a lot of amazing, unexpected transformations.

4 AM. One year has passed. Forty teenagers (all wearing blue T-Shirts) are hugging each other, with big, innocent smiles on their face. They feel happy, yet very sad for leaving their host families, their friends and all the great memories they shared together. I am one of them. I look around and can't recognize any of the people that I got here with. No, it's not their looks, they do have the same haircut and the same eye color, it's not even their large pants, basketball caps, or appetite for pizza. It's the way they talk, how confident they feel, and the maturity that hides in their voices. I realize how much this experience has shaped our characters, our destinies. It was all worth it: every single second, every single doubt, and every single effort. We fooled time this year; we squeezed a lifetime journey in only ten months.

Always be ready for transformation, no matter how challenging your journey may seem. Leave your comfort zone, and step out, because the times you fail, the times you feel alone or misunderstood-those are the times you grow the most. That's what America taught me, and it still does, one ocean away.

Undergraduate / 'When literature becomes life' - Supplemental Essay [2]

When literature becomes life

Literature is one of the most beautiful gifts that I received as a human being. Since I was six, I knew that words define me; they're pieces of my genetic and emotional structure. Words never get old, books never betray, characters never leave the space they're living in. I loved that permanence, that constant present that always remains loyal to your age, to the feelings you had when first reading a book.

As an author, I approached literature with a much more mature, yet rebellious attitude. I believe that writing needs to be innovative, shiny, and uncommon. You need to surprise your readers with each paragraph, emotion, gesture. Only an authentic voice can really impact someone's life and the way that person will see the world after reading a poem or a novel. You become fully responsible for the reader's journey through the creations of your mind. Once you accept literature as being a substantial part of you, you'll never be able to walk away from the stories, metaphors, and hunting ideas that follow you as a writer. It becomes part of your existence.

One of the first memories I recall as a child is connected to poetry. My second grade teacher gave us an assignment to complete in class. We were supposed to write a short poem about one of the stories that we recently read. When my turn came to speak, I was a little bit nervous, because the poem I wrote was very different from what my colleagues shared before. However, the teacher convinced me to speak, and I did continue. When I stopped reading, she had a strange expression on her face. She told me that some lines from my writing belonged to a literary masterpiece written by one of the most brilliant writers of our country. Also, she pointed out that only high school seniors are studying it, so there was no way that I could have ever read it. She seemed amazed and smiled back to me.

Ten years after, as a senior, I started reading the poem. It was truly amazing: the structure, the rhymes, the author's personal view. When getting to the end, I recognized those three lines, and a tear came streaming down my face. It was my first time reading it, and I had no logical explanation for what happened long time ago, in elementary school. Maybe it was the unconscious, the early morning hour, a child's imagination...or maybe it was a sign that literature has nothing to do with time, age or rationality, it just lives inside us. I chose to believe that.