Undergraduate / "Keep the conversation flowing" - Dartmouth Extracurricular [2]

Hi everyone,

This is my (much) revised version of my earlier essay. PLEASE CRITIQUE, and Thank You so much in advance!
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Things changed on that Sunday morning when I saw my roommate still lying in bed three hours after she woke up; tucking herself tightly in the blankets, she was sobbing. The sun was bright, but my heart sunk in darkness. Her posture reminded me I was once like her, depressed. The familiar agony of depression thus pushed me live a bigger life than fun weekend regattas. Forcing my roommate up so she could actually talk with me, I became the listener whom I once so wished to have. But my roommate wasn't the only one. In our school where 87 of 95 international students were Chinese, conversations didn't come as easily as indifference. As summer rolled around, I wrote a seven-page letter about my experience and sent it to my teachers. Speaking up empowered me. So although no one replied, I knew I could do more. Coming back to school, I initiated a writing lab and paired international students up with American students. Now we had 60 of us in the room, and each of us all needed to have our stories told and voice heard. We have to keep the conversation flowing and our understandings deepening.

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Undergraduate / Dartmouth Extracurricular Essay; keeping the conversation going [3]

Hello guys,

I tried to word it differently to make it appealing, but nothing feels quite right except for going straight into the topic. Do you guys think it's okay or tedious/weak?

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I initiated a writing program for the international students because from how much speechlessness hurt me, I saw keeping the conversation going as critical. In my high school where the 96 international students, 85 of which are Chinese, being the only boarders, the physical separation has lead to cultural segregation. Some of us who were less sufficient in English were spiritually grounded in the Chinese community. Our writing program helps around 30 international students pair up with American students. We hope to horn writing skills but also to offer a platform to start conversations and promote understanding. For the same reason, I also proposed to and worked with the administrations in my dorm hoping to create a new rooming system, which can hopefully be achieved next year.

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This is also closely knitted to my main essay, so please read and critique!!

Thank you so very much.

Undergraduate / '60 Chinese students summoned' - Dartmouth Main Essay [5]

Hi everyone,

Thank you for taking time reading this. I really appreciate your efforts!

I'm recently struggling between two essays I wrote for Dartmouth, both of which present my personal identity struggle of being a Chinese in America. I came to this country at the age of 16, and I speak English with barely discernable accent. I tried my best to blend in America. However, as time goes by, I grow increasingly ashamed that I feel subtly un-Chinese.

The first essay is "Black Powders". Mildly, it accounts for my experience going through security check when I came back to the States the end of this summer. I was afraid that the nutrition powders -- the black powders -- my mother prepared for me would me mistaken as illegal drugs. So when the officer asked if I eat it like protein shake with cold milk, to avoid further tangle, I said yes. However, if given a second chance, I would rather be brave and tell him, Nope, you should drink it with very hot water.

"Black Powers" -- Main Essay for Dartmouth

The second essay is more radical. Please note that I come from a school where out of over 600 hundred kids, 80 of us are Chinese. However, many of them are not sufficient in English.

Please criticize!
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That shameful shame struck me on a morning when all 60 Chinese students in my school were summoned to the front foyer. Trying to memorize the difference of Romantic and Neo-Classic art for my first-period Art Appreciation quiz, I was frozen for a second. Slowly I packed my notecards, picked up my backpack and walked out of the library as quietly as I could. Anyhow, trying to stay in the back yet only ended up in the very front due to my earliness, in the front foyer there I stood. I waited, and I watched my fellow Chinese students walking towards to school gate in their usual silence with their sleepy eyes half-lid; their heavy steps beat softly against the ceramic tile floor, like angry needles piercing through cotton. Meanwhile, I watched my American classmates walked into the gate with their faces beaming with the brightness of sun. I could also see their laughter of crystal shattered - they must be shocked to see the gradually aggregating crowd of us Asians, who had a reputation of being taciturn and uninvolved. I could see their steps of spring deer slowed, curiously wondering what had happened to these infamously naughty children most of who, rumor had it that, slept in class, in library and in cafeteria and never had their work finished... "Yes." My heart trembled and murmured: "We are those Chinese kids who live a life isolated."

It was the feeling of besieged. It is the flood that numbed me, bit me and suffocated me. As I stood and watched the presentation of Ms. Wu, who was newly appointed to coordinate between Chinese students and the school, I couldn't help but feel ironic: we go to school in America, and yet we were deemed a group that couldn't even communicate our need. It was the same Ms. Wu who once marveled at how I speak English with the minimum accent. Should I even be proud? I remember so vividly that when I first came here, I was so, very pride. My yellow skin bestowed me an eye to catch the nuance, a voice to raise the question and sometimes even the ability to make the change. Yet I also knew on that very morning, I lost my pride. In fact, I was ashamed. I was ashamed that I was so subtly, un-Chinese.

I decided to care for my shame in the way a mother cared for her grumpy child. I questioned myself: who was I to be ashamed? I was the one who thought she could get away with cultural conflict only by acing difficult classes and acting like she didn't care. But deep down my heart, I knew that I did. Because I am one of them, I am one of those Chinese who are being either praised or despised which didn't really matter. It was because of those supposedly happy yet indeed upset faces of my fellow countrymen that I dare to question: 3000 miles away from home at the age of 18, we were the brave ones, yet why weren't we proud of who we were?

That morning I ended up walking to class with my chin up. Hey friend, I'm from China, and I make my voice heard.
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Undergraduate / "Black Powers" -- Main Essay for Dartmouth [5]

Question: Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.

In the way one handled a delicate china tea set, Mom handed me a sloppy Ziploc bag of black powder the night before I left home for the States: "This is Gu-yuan-gao. Yao-Yao, remember, one spoon a day. You need to mix it with very hot water and eat it before you eat anything else. This is very good stuff: red jujube, sesame, walnut, lotus seed and black rice... all in one bag." In all seriousness and certainty that you could possibly ask for in a housewife, Mom added: "It keeps you healthy."

I held the bag to my chest. "I know, Mom. Thank you." Despite its look, the powders actually had an assuring smell of walnut, bitter but sweet. Just like home.

So I had to check "Yes" for the "I am (We are) bringing fruits, plants, food, or insect" statement in the Customs Declaration Form. The check mark proved troublesome: I was asked to open all my suitcases for inspection every time I passed through a security check. As I approached one after another suspicious-looking officers, fear took in charge of my heart: the smell, so strong - would they have a dog that didn't like the smell of walnut and jujube and barked at me? The Ziploc bag, sloppy - would they mistake the scary-looking black powders as some sort of illegal drug? How should I explain the ingredients? Will they even understand me? Or what if they end up taking the powders away from me? Oh please don't discard it to random garbage where it laid some unfinished General Tso's Chicken in a box - Mom had to wait two and a half hours in the pharmacy before all the jujubes were dried and grinded and well mixed...

Thus I never could wait till the officers to ask me what those powders were. Eagerly I felt an urge to defend myself soon as they unzip my suitcase: I believed that the dangerous smell of walnut and jujube had now invaded their limbic system and stirred up gigantic waves of suspicion. Now the officer was wiping the inside of my suitcase with a piece of dusting paper testing for potential "foreign virus"; I knew the drill, and I bet you he had caught sight of the obnoxious Ziploc bag - though vaguely, didn't I just see him frowning? ...

I decided to take initiative. "You see that bag of black power underneath the big blue SAT book? Yes my mom prepared those for me. It was nuts and all sorts of things grinded into powders..." But wait! Wouldn't I be better off showing case all the ingredients?

"Sounds like a lot of nutrition! So you eat it like protein shake with nice cold milk?" The officer began zip up my suitcase.

"No... but yeah." I lied. With deep relief, I pushed forward a smile on my face. "Certainly."

He didn't even lift the SAT Official Guide, let alone pay attention my sloppy Ziploc bag of black power with the strong, bittersweet smell of walnut and jujube.