Undergraduate / Oh, Love for Literature, Where Are Thou?; Common Application "Main Essay" [6]

Hi there, everyone! First and foremost, thank you for taking your personal times for reading and editing my essay; I am greatly honored and thankful for all of your help! Now a little background of this essay; this essay is a revised and reused essay that I had submitted and used for the University of Texas at Austin. However, because the Common Application requires a maximum of 500 words, I had to cut some parts out and make it more concise. Thankfully, I got it down right to the dot (500 words). If it's possible, please read over my essay and provide feedback, criticism, suggestions, corrections, etc. on what you think of the meaning of my essays, its grammar, its overall structure, etc. Be as harsh and honest as possible! As always, thank you so much for this. :) Here is the prompt I chose for The Common Application:

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

And here is the essay itself:

Oh, Love for Literature, Where Are Thou?

Sipping my coffee while flipping through the daily issue of The Washington Post, one title snatched my eyes' attention away from all others: "SAT Reading Scores Hit a Four-Decade Low". Spewing my coffee out repulsively, I scrutinized the article's contents, praying that the title had done nothing but cried wolf; to my dismay, there indeed existed a terrifying wolf. Based upon the article, the College Board reported that the average, SAT reading score of the graduating class of 2012 plummeted to 496, a 34-point drop from 1972. As if these numbers were knives jabbed into my heart, I lifelessly slumped in my chair, realizing that my most pessimistic views of society were indeed coming true; the young future of America that I was a member of was turning its back towards one of the country's dearest soul mates: Literature.

It wasn't until my high school years did I truly understand the vitality of reading. When faced with lectures of America's past or that of the world's, I discovered that while my peers struggled to established the simple bonds between America's colonial days and its Reconstruction Era, I easily constructed gigantic paintings depicting all the connections between such events of the past, present and future. The mesmerizing beauty of these paintings, however, came not from the hours of lectures, but from the vast knowledge I had acquired through unraveling the tragic but epic life of Hugo's Jean Valjean or by deciphering Voltaire's satire against authoritarianism from Candide's struggles. It was from flipping through these true works of art that my knowledge of humanity's feats became holistic, understanding the perpetual affinity between society's past, present, and future. But how morbid it is that discovery can be a double-edged sword! As I soared towards the heavens of intellectual prosperity, I realized that my very classmates who ridiculed my passion for novels all their lives were now drowning in ignorance. Before my very eyes, I was witnessing through my own acquaintances the painful severance of my generation's friendship with the stories of ancient, society's sole key to infinite wisdom. Homer and his "The Odyssey"; Cervantes and his bashing of the assumed unity between class and worth in "Don Quixote"; the countless, meaningful impacts etched out across these inked passages. All this beauty would vanish like ashes and dust from this generation if reading were to become an extinct action as ominously foreshadowed by this disheartening article. With reading gone, the torch of knowledge would die and with it, humanity. I mustn't allow that to happen.

But alas, what lasting change am I to create if my actions consisted solely of sulking in this chair? I've had my coffee and my breakfast of news through the paper. It's time that I find my beloved "The Cat in the Hat"; there are children hoping for a captivating fantasy to be told at the public library today, eagerly anticipating for the boundaries of their minds to expand into uncharted waters.

--Essay owned and created by Tran Le Phu (Paul Le Tran)
P.L.T.

Undergraduate / Voluntary Teaching; Princeton University/Summer [4]

Hi there, everyone! First and foremost, I would like to thank everyone for taking their own, personal time to read my essay; I greatly appreciate it and am truly thankful for your sacrifice. :) My main gripe with my essay are the facts that it is roughly 300 characters over the 2500 character limit and that I overall don't feel so satisfied with the overall structure of the essay. Despite these feelings, I'm in sort of a ditch due to how I can't figure out how to neither shorten my essay nor structure it in a more pleasant way. Because of this, I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on ways to make this essay more precise and short, any fixings on grammar, and any feedback, criticism, etc. on the overall message of this essay as well as its holistic level of pleasure to read. In other words, was it memorable, enjoyable, etc. to read? Again, thank you so much for taking your time to do this for me. :) Here's the prompt:

Please tell us how you have spent the last two summers (or vacations between school years), including any jobs you have held, if not already detailed on the Common Application.

And here is the essay itself:

If one were to scrutinize the portrait of my summer prior to junior year, one could easily describe its colors and shapes to symbolize newly, sprouting loves in a wide array of topics. In the early stages of this sunshine season, I had jumped upon the chance to morph the seemingly infinite hours of the days into glorious opportunities to both reincarnate my long, lost passion for the viola and further polish the diamond I had crafted over ten years of piano. In addition to exploring the lands of music, I also sailed the seas of literature through the words of Cervantes and his "Don Quixote" and the eloquence of Hemingway's poems. Apart from the arts, however, due to always having a keen interest in the world of business, I decided to flirt with this unknown world by initiating an independent, racquet-restringing business. Being of lover of school, however, I concluded my post-sophomore days of endless sunshine with an enrollment in speech and US government in my local, community college for extra, high school credit.

Transitioning onward to my post-junior summer's canvas, one could easily see it as a representation of the maturation and fruitfulness of the sprouts planted in the previous season. With my desires towards academics immortal and tireless, I enrolled in macroeconomics with my local, community college and independently learned AP Calculus AB through textbooks to prepare myself for AP Calculus BC, the class I was to skip into starting my senior year. My appreciation for the arts grew exponentially as I collected brilliant works of Chopin and Vivaldi and absorbed the lectures of Hugo in his "Les Miserables". My experimentations with business morphed into an endorsement of the field as I advertised to more local, tennis courts. Ultimately however, the fruits of my labor were not eaten by me, but instead by others around me. Amassed with all these new treasures collected over the two seasons, I blissfully decided to distribute the wealth by voluntarily tutoring my little cousins in academics and watering the interests in their bright, little minds for piano, reading, and writing.

After examining the two paintings of my summers, it is reasonable for one to draw the conclusion that the artist (myself) must be nothing short of a workaholic, a man whose desires never cease to plateau; nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, perhaps one of the banes to my existence is rising to the early hours of the day, especially in the summer mornings, a time meant to be filled with silent slumber, not the sound of alarm clocks. Although an oxymoron at its finest, the reason justifying this contradiction is that unlike the many youths who believe summer as a time for pure play and relaxation, my eyes instead see a season of opportunities and enlightenment for both myself and others.

--Essay written and owned by Tran Le Phu (Paul Le Tran)
P.L.T.

Undergraduate / 'My Mother, the Woman Who Forgets' - UT Austin Essay "A" [10]

Hi everyone! First and foremost, I'm really humbled and thankful for you guys to take your own personal time to read my essay. Essentially, having a tendency of writing long-winded essays, I'm mainly looking for suggestions on how to perhaps make my essay more concise, but still retain its full impact and significance. :) HOWEVER, any suggestions on grammar, diction, syntax, etc. would be greatly appreciated and welcomed! If you have any suggestions, compliments, or even constructive criticism, I am grateful for all insights. Once more, I'm extremely thankful for you guys to read and review my essay. :)

Here's the prompt:

Topic A: "Write an essay in which you tell us about someone who has made an impact on your life and explain how and why this person is important to you."

And here's my essay:

My Mother, the Woman Who Forgets, Yet Remembers
By: Paul Tran

"Dearest, have you seen my glasses? I swear I had them with me just a moment ago!"
Imagine hearing this phrase about three times a day, five days a week; imagine always forced to halt whatever action one was doing, begin hunting for one's mother's glasses, then repetitively tell her to leave it at the designated spot; rinse, dry, and repeat. Within only a few weeks, one simple, innocent sentence has morphed into the perhaps the most cruel, painful method of punishment through annoyance. This train of thought is quite sinister and selfish, yet it can be related to the minds of countless youths entering the era of pre-adulthood, of the start of independence. I was a member of that youth, an associate ignorant of others and simply absorbed in my own ambitions for personal gain of prosperity and own conscience. For the majority of the years of my life, I was that selfish adolescent, incapable of understanding why my mother could never remember such simple tasks, ultimately labelling her as an object of inconvenient hinderance than a supporting parent. Oh, how I regret my childhood years of stupidity and selfishness.

On a humid, easily irritable evening, my mental pot of water could no longer hold its boiling steam; pulled out of the realm of literature for the countless time by the exclamation of the "mysterious" disappearance of her glasses, I slapped down my novel, stomped to the glasses' location, dragged my mother there, and pointed them to her, with intent to humiliate her. As her eyes innocently darted from the glasses to my glare, my eyes seemed to scream out the message, "How can you not remember such vital objects that allow you the sense of sight?" Sinking back into my bed and attempting once more to dive into my novel, I was once more snapped back into reality by my mother; expecting to hear another declaration of an object being lost in the house, my ears were instead impacted by words I had neither expected nor had comprehended before. What exactly were the words of my mother that so captivated yet pulverized my ways of comprehension? What meaning and purpose was carried out through the soft voice of hers?

Imagine being mentally hammered with nails whenever attempting to read a simple passage or novel; imagine being on the highest pillars of academics, able to conquer all educational tasks thrown at you, but ultimately forced to resign due to the horrendous pains acquired through a simple lesson of mathematics or history; imagine to be stripped of one's identity, for sleep to be a forgotten ability of the past, of no longer fathoming how to communicate; imagine fearsomely fleeing from the grasps of death of the Vietnamese Communists, all while not even having the slightest clue of what is actually happening; imagine essentially rebuilding, relearning all the fundamentals that allow a human being to be human on a crowded, raggedy vessel in the Pacific, surrounded by refugees similar to oneself. Imagine. Throughout my youth, I had never been given neither the opportunity nor reason to ever conceptualize such morbid, climatic circumstances; my pains, stress, and sufferings all originated from going through a day without lunch or forgetting to do my homework. It was through these minutes of my life that I had truly recognized the inferiority of my first-world problems. The ultimatum of my enlightenment did not stop there, however; unable to fall back into the realm of my novel due to the unknown uncomfortableness evoked from my mother's epic tale, my perspective and thoughts upon the annoyance of my mother all crumbled as I heard the single sentence that would forever remain in my heart, "Son, dinner's ready! I cooked your favorite, phở."

The sentence crashed upon me like a tsunami, pounding waves and waves of realism against me. Here exists my mother, a woman who could not even accomplish the simple task of remembering her glasses, yet who was able to perfectly recite the beloved meals of her son. Here exists my mother, a woman who had essentially forgotten how to be human during her escape from the Vietnam War, yet was always punctual with feeding her child, giving her child medicine when ill, caring for her child. Here exists her son, a child who cared, thought, and did only for himself, pushing all others out of his way under the name of ambition. Never had I ever felt such shame and disentitlement at a dinner meal before.

To this day, my heart still burns with the fiery fuel of avidity, passionately desiring to climb up the high rungs of society and prosperity, and to also conquer the fields of academics. However, my drive for such successes has digressed from the path of selfishness. From the night that I had realized my mother's ability to always remember her unconditional love for her child, despite the undeserving consternations she had to endure through, I saw no justification for such egoism as my own to exist; I saw no righteousness existed in the belief of self-prosperity. Because of my mother's forever-engraved affection for others, I beheld the purpose of one's life: to aspire to greatness, then to give it all back for the purpose of promoting humanity's prosperity. So the next time I ever hear my mother cry for help to search for her glasses again, instead of displaying to the world a ghastly frown of frustration, I'll instead possess a simple smile, happy to assist my mother, the mother who forgets herself, yet always remembers others.

--Essay owned and written by Paul Tran
P.T.

Undergraduate / UT Austin Essay "B" 'Oh, Love for Literature, Where Have Thou Gone?' [4]

Hi there, everyone! I'm really thankful for you guys to take the time to read my essay. Essentially, I wrote this essay indeed in the morning, while I was sipping coffee, and reading the paper around September; I just made a few revisions and tried my best to polish it. Here's the topic:

Topic B: "Choose an issue of importance to you-the issue could be personal, school related, local, political, or international in scope-and write an essay in which you explain the significance of that issue to yourself, your family, your community, or your generation."

My only problem is that the length of the essay should be no more than 1 page; my essay comes out to be a page and a fourth. I would greatly appreciate if you guys find any opportunities to make the overall essay to be more concise, or find any unnecessary details to be cut out. Again, thank you so much for this. :) Here's my essay:

Oh, Love for Literature, Where Have Thou Gone?
By: Paul Tran

Sipping on my cup of morning coffee while flipping through the daily issue of The Washington Post, a particular title grabbed the attention of my eyes away from all others: "SAT Reading Scores Hit a Four-Decade Low" (The Washington Post). Pouring my coffee down the sink as if it had suddenly become repulsive as my eyes were glued to the paper, I scrutinized the article's contents, believing the title had done nothing but cried wolf; to my dismay, there indeed existed a terrifying wolf. Based upon the scores of the graduating class of 2012, the average, SAT reading score plummeted to 496, a 34-point drop from 1972 (The Washington Post). A 34-point plummet; the lowest score in four decades. Bewildered by these numbers, my stomach clenched further as I lifelessly fell onto my chair, realizing that the my most pessimistic views of society were indeed true; the young generation and future of America as a whole, that I was a member of, was turning its back towards one of the country's most loving soul mates: Literature.

I am a bookworm. That's right, I said it to the world; I am indeed a bookworm and I'm proud to be one. Reading had always been a close, fond friend of mine throughout my life; during the years of childhood, I spent countless hours venturing into the wondrous lands of Where the Wild Things Are and savored the succulent flavors and aroma of Green Eggs and Ham. Maturing with time, I soon expanded my passion being taking up waltzing with Oliver Twist and Robert Frost. To pick up a novel was to open the doors to a new perspective, a new life beyond my own; when the last page is flipped and all I could see is the back spine of the novel, I always ended every book with the same response: a heavy sigh of nostalgia and remorse, staring at the book as I recollect all the story's memories while deeply wishing for the plot to trend onward, for more pages and chapters to magically flourish into the novel. What can I say; a boy can dream, can he not?

As I peered into the magnifying glass of Sherlock Holmes, wept for the good health of Huckleberry Finn, and foiled the devious plans of the Cardinal Richelieu with Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, I soon began to see that my passion for literature was more of a private pleasure. Whenever excitedly bringing up topics from the numerous adventures I had encountered with my peers, I was met with only a few nervous chuckles and upright indifference; my friends simply had no interest in reading as I did! Thinking this only as a phase, I continued to unlock the worlds of literature into my years of high school, now conversing with Victor Hugo and Dumas through their words within Les Misérables and The Count of Monte Cristo, hoping that my peers would do similarly the same. To my misfortunes, my wishes were nothing but ashes and dust. Amidst all this negativity however, I realized that it is through this indifference towards reading that I solely possessed one quality none of my fellow classman could boast in ownership: a marriage with the past. As my classmates struggled to tie the connections between the colonial years of America to the outbreak of the Civil War as well as the New Deal and such, I instead beamed in my courses, vividly painting myself a holistic painting of the relationship of the past and present. Furthermore, I was able to fill in ditches along the path of humanity through thematic lessons I had acquired through my collection of works from authors of the past, ranging from that of the Great Depression to the lives of the common man during the French Revolution. Through the tales of books both ancient and fresh, my perspective of society's --be it American or international-- feats had become holistic and complete, while that of my peers remained vague and astray. Regardless of these advantages, I did not respond to this discovery with happiness; instead, I looked upon with anguish. To see my classmates lack appreciation and understanding of Voltaire's powerful, satirical ridicules against the orthodox ways of Europe in Candide or ignorantly miss the relevance of Huxley's eerily predictions of the industrial future to today's life in Brave New World evoked emotions more closely associated with painful stabs of cold steel to my heart than blissfulness; before my very eyes, I was witnessing through my own, close acquaintances the slow, painful severance of my generation's education with the stories of the past, and with that, the overall deterioration of today's wisdom.

With these endless thoughts of my antiquity flooding my mind as I sat on my chair like a puppet, staring at the article's title for a seemingly endless duration of time, I finally snapped back into reality with the eventual release of a heavy sigh. If the current state of reading were to follow the trend as stated from the newspaper, not only would this generation's marriage with the past and its wisdom be severed, but the entire knowledge of today's society would be nothing but crippled. Homer and his epics like The Odyssey; Cervantes and his bash against the assumed unity of class and worth in Don Quixote; the impacts carried upon the leafs of these novels, the meaning etched out from its inked words. All this would be lost from the minds of this generation if reading were to becoming an action of the forgotten past. The torch of knowledge would be blown out. But alas, what change is there am I to do if all my actions consisted of nothing but sulking around? I've had my coffee and my breakfast of the news through the paper. It's time that I find that beloved The Cat in the Hat; there are children expecting a captivating story to be told today at the public library.

--Essay owned and written by Paul Le Tran (Tran Le Phu)
P.T.