sidmarur
Mar 24, 2012
Undergraduate / SMU Application Essay on achievements and contributions [7]
Alright,so this is what I could come up with.Please help me out with editing too because I need to trim the essay down to 300 words,and I'm over shooting by 230 words :/
Thank You :D
In the summer of 2009,I made a week-long trip to Tehri, a small village in the north Indian state of Uttaranchal, as part of a youth volunteer program. I made this trip with some of my classmates and coordinators from the organization behind this program.
It was my first time in a village, and also my first shot at community service. Hitherto devoting my services to books and video games .We were instructed to bring our own supplies, from mosquito repellant to a clean set of underwear. Using a primitive stove and a portable gas cylinder, we cooked our own food which turned out to be a cup of Maggi more often than not. The village school was our camp, as summer break was going on. There was no electricity except for a couple of bulbs in some rooms. A green patch of land on the other side of the hill became our toilet.
I spoke to the villagers about their daily routine, their struggles and how they overcame this .I realized that we faced the same problems in our daily lives, it's only our approach that differs. For instance, if I tear one of my shoes, I don't think twice before I go out to buy a new pair. But, kids here just gave their shoes to their mother who repaired it to the best extent she could and the child would continue wearing the same.
Building a two-room house was one of the most challenging jobs I have undertaken till date .I had the fairly menial seeming job of transporting bricks, but that 500m trek up and down with a basket full of bricks made me see the kind of pain, hard work and effort it takes to build something from scratch. One of the evenings, after playing with the kids there, I got talking to Karu, a lively and positively cheerful eleven-year old. He started talking about mathematics and all he'd studied till now, which was 6th grade. He had to stop studying as his family decided to invest in more profitable avenues than education.
As the week flew by, I spent my last meal and night there with this small family who owned a ration shop. Supper included sugar-coated bread and cold milk, reflecting much of their aspirations from life.
The idea of SAP-Student Action Program came to us while we were trying to think of things that we gave to the villagers in return for their precious friendship. Our strategy was to utilize all the resources a middle-class urban student possessed to uplift the educational standards of rural kids. We opened a brownie stall in school for a month, which was functional thrice a week, and also held a comical skit depicting the lives of the people we met and their hardships. We then collected spare books and stationary from students in our school and from friends in our neighborhoods as there was a lack of educational material in the village school .Through our trip coordinator, all the cash and material we collected was successfully sent to the village. Karu is currently studying in class 8 as part of the government's right to education act.
Alright,so this is what I could come up with.Please help me out with editing too because I need to trim the essay down to 300 words,and I'm over shooting by 230 words :/
Thank You :D
In the summer of 2009,I made a week-long trip to Tehri, a small village in the north Indian state of Uttaranchal, as part of a youth volunteer program. I made this trip with some of my classmates and coordinators from the organization behind this program.
It was my first time in a village, and also my first shot at community service. Hitherto devoting my services to books and video games .We were instructed to bring our own supplies, from mosquito repellant to a clean set of underwear. Using a primitive stove and a portable gas cylinder, we cooked our own food which turned out to be a cup of Maggi more often than not. The village school was our camp, as summer break was going on. There was no electricity except for a couple of bulbs in some rooms. A green patch of land on the other side of the hill became our toilet.
I spoke to the villagers about their daily routine, their struggles and how they overcame this .I realized that we faced the same problems in our daily lives, it's only our approach that differs. For instance, if I tear one of my shoes, I don't think twice before I go out to buy a new pair. But, kids here just gave their shoes to their mother who repaired it to the best extent she could and the child would continue wearing the same.
Building a two-room house was one of the most challenging jobs I have undertaken till date .I had the fairly menial seeming job of transporting bricks, but that 500m trek up and down with a basket full of bricks made me see the kind of pain, hard work and effort it takes to build something from scratch. One of the evenings, after playing with the kids there, I got talking to Karu, a lively and positively cheerful eleven-year old. He started talking about mathematics and all he'd studied till now, which was 6th grade. He had to stop studying as his family decided to invest in more profitable avenues than education.
As the week flew by, I spent my last meal and night there with this small family who owned a ration shop. Supper included sugar-coated bread and cold milk, reflecting much of their aspirations from life.
The idea of SAP-Student Action Program came to us while we were trying to think of things that we gave to the villagers in return for their precious friendship. Our strategy was to utilize all the resources a middle-class urban student possessed to uplift the educational standards of rural kids. We opened a brownie stall in school for a month, which was functional thrice a week, and also held a comical skit depicting the lives of the people we met and their hardships. We then collected spare books and stationary from students in our school and from friends in our neighborhoods as there was a lack of educational material in the village school .Through our trip coordinator, all the cash and material we collected was successfully sent to the village. Karu is currently studying in class 8 as part of the government's right to education act.
