Undergraduate / 'my idea of studying in the United States' - Common Application: Three [4]

My personal essay for the common app V2. I have decided to change tactics and write about a preset topic "Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you". Here it is please feel free to comment and edit anything.

The one constant person throughout my life, the person who has been a constant reminder of everything I should strive to be, a person who I have tried to emulate is my grandfather. He is "70 years young" as he likes to say, is a father to four children and grandfather to nine grandchildren. He has taught me more things about the world and it's inner workings than any teacher could. He has taught me the wonders of the ancient world and politics. When he was a child he left school after secondary school never going to university or any type of higher education. Yet in his later years he has strived to improve his own education and putting what he knows into perspective. For example using his knowledge of stone masonry to explain to me just how the pyramids were built. As well as using his experience as area manager of a large region in the southwest for the local council to explain ecosystems and tidal movements. My grandfather taught me gardening, brickwork and the basics of decorating. He has sculpted me into the intelligent and hardworking man I am today, And stimulated my interest and passion for the subject of History. Although we don't agree on everything such as politics these differences allow us to discuss ideas from different perspectives.

He has been my advisor throughout my education so far helped me decide on my secondary school and sixth form and constantly pushing me towards university. Claiming that if I could get there and get a good degree I could do whatever I wanted. He told me that no-one would hand life to me on a silver platter and to get to where I wanted I would have to work for it He told me that education was everything in this world and wanted me to heighten myself away from the council estates which surrounded my own home. He continued to push this idea into me during my A-levels. When I thought about the combination of these ideas only one thing came into my mind, a dream which has brought people to the United States for countless years, The American dream.

And so when I came to with my idea of studying in the United States he was excited, he knew it represented everything we had been talking about since I was five years old when I first visited the states in the year 2000. And so he spent the next few weeks with me looking over colleges and details together. And together we planned my next few years. Now I am prepared and with my grandfather's love and compassion I know I am ready to take that great leap across the pond to learn not just History but the American way of life, its cultures and ideas first hand, and god willing by the end of my experience I will be fully prepared for whatever the world has to offer.

Undergraduate / My common app essay, titled "A horrible Briticism" [NEW]

I am a international student looking to study at Gettysburg college and here is my essay for the common app I choose my own title, underneath it is the short essay answer for the common application describing my after dinner speaking competition.

A horrible Briticism

There are many British traditions of which I accept like being fluent in the language of irony and sarcasm which we Brits like to believe we invented. Another tradition is my amazing ability to queue in a line quietly and with order, don't believe me? Go to any post office across the land and you will see a small string of both elderly and young people all stood in silence waiting in single file for their number to be called to the cashier. British traditions such as these came about during and after the Second World War queuing came from queuing to receive your rations cards in order to buy food and water for yourself and your family. My grandmother has told me how her mother saved these ration cards for two months in order to bake my great aunt a cake on her fifth birthday wheras the languages of irony and sarcasm were first spoken of in the cabaret shows in the fifties followed by the political satire movement which occurred in the 1960's.

I follow these traditions like my fathers before me because they are imprinted in me. From a young age we were taught them, it is a matter of national pride that we British people do these things. But there is one British tradition which I, unlike the rest of my family dare not follow that is caravanning for those of you that do not know caravanning is the act of attaching a caravan to your car and dragging it to a nice field, preferably in the south west of the country, unhitching your caravan and spend the next two weeks living inside the caravan and treating it as a vacation. Well I do apologise but there is nothing holiday like about that entire sentence I don't see how travelling for two hours will magically make the weather improve to near Mediterranean temperatures which are shown on the brochures for these caravan parks. Nor do I see the point of living for two weeks in a £10,000 aluminium shell which requires you to change the interior to look like a Tetris board in order to make a bed to sleep in! No for me the best vacation is away, far away from the repeated apologising, queuing for a stamp, underlying sarcasm which Britain is so well known for

That's why I love, nay I need the thrill I get when the plane speeds off down the runway pushing me back into my seat and the incline I feel as the plane points its big nose into the stars. That's why my best holiday ever occurred in the year 2000 when I went to New York. I spent 3 weeks in the big apple enjoying the sights and sounds of a vibrant cosmopolitan city and it was heaven I remember the vast rush in the morning from the commuters into the Starbucks a few blocks from us. I remember sitting in that very Starbucks sipping some orange juice or "OJ" as you Americans like to call it reclining in the shadow of a pair of buildings now famous in their tragic demise just a year later. To put it bluntly I fell in love with not just America but the ideas of America the freedom the breaks from ridiculous tradition (need I say more than caravanning?).

That's why I want to come to those great United States and learn history. I don't want to just read and soak up history, I want to write it as Oscar Wilde once said 'any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it'. And were else to write history but in such a rich diverse land of America my passion for history arose from sitting with my grandfather, from well almost straight away after birth, sitting with him and watching the discovery channel learning of the wonders of the world in our minds together we visited the sphinx, Pompeii, Mount Rushmore and the battlefields of the second world war taking in every morsel of knowledge we could sometimes at the edge of our seat watching on wonder at the amazement and ingenuity of man, other times sat back in sadness at the unneeded loss of life. But all of the time together watching, reading and learning. And that is why I want to study History in the United States.

The time is eight fifty two and my heart is beating rapidly adrenaline surges around my body the official toastmaster marches to the stage, where he reaches the microphone and stares at me raising his hand he shouts "our first speaker Jack Hobbs and his topic title is Crowning Glory"! The crowd around me have now stood up clapping and applauding and nervously I stand and begin my walk, cue cards tucked away in my hand. The camera's swivel their angle following my walk. I climb the stairs and reach the apex of my journey the lectern itself.

It is my final speech which has taken over six months to write, read, prepare and then share with my audience but as I begin my training kicks in the nerves descend from me and I can see them now attacking my opponents as I get into the swing of my speech. The crowd hang off my every word. My arms sweeping them into a frenzy of cackling laughter then solemn silence as I play them like a well strong violin. With a few seconds left to spare I announce for the ladies and gentlemen to follow me into a toast and they do, like a terracotta army they stand before me and toast Crowning glory! And with a rapturous applause and I look into my opponents eyes urging them to 'beat that'.

I look forward to all the help you can give me. Thank you