Undergraduate / "Not everything is as it appears" ; Pomona College ; You have Five Minutes [2]

Pomona College:
Prompt: If you had the complete attention of your community for five minutes, what would you say, and what would you hope to accomplish?

If I had the attention of my community for five minutes, I would tell them that not everything is as it appears. As humans, we have this terrible tendency to judge. From appearances to beliefs, we delight in enforcing status quos and rules of conduct upon people, touting all the while that without these rules, we would be no better than barbarians or animals.

Unfortunately, for all our criticisms, we fail at judging the most important characteristic any human being can have: intention. I do not know if we as a society are really capable of differentiating between actions and intentions; even in our idolized justice systems, we leave intentions out of the legal equation, literally judging people on what they have done alone.

Indeed, it is also surprising how we are able to praise people without ever asking them why. Why they decided to do a good deed? Were they getting anything out of it?Maybe we do not ask because we are afraid of being horrified. More likely, it is because we do not expect an honest answer. And anyway, it is easier to believe that our "heroes" do everything with the best of intentions and that our "villains" do everything with the worst.

Regardless, I have often wondered how society would react if everyone's intentions were made public, if there was no need to read between the lines. Would society fall apart? Is society not meant to see humans as complex, as a mix of Goldings and Locke instead of innately good or innately evil? I do not know. But with five minutes of my own community's time, I would ask them. I would ask them to look beyond judgements and to be honest with their intentions, holding on to the hope that any desire to enforce status quos or to stereotype would eventually disappear.

I really appreciate your help! :)

Undergraduate / Differences between American and Japanese culture; Yale Supp; More about me [2]

The Prompt: In this second essay, please reflect on something you would like us to know about you that we might not learn from the rest of your application-or on something that you would like to say more about. We ask that you limit your essay to fewer than 500 words.

Tell me what you think. I really appreciate the critiques and am asking for them, so I promise you guys that I won't be offended by anything you have to say about it. My biggest worry right now is that it doesn't really answer the prompt.Thanks in advance!

"I am Sailor Moon, the champion of justice. In the name of the moon, I will right wrong and triumph over evil... and that means you," yelled the scantily-dressed female heroine as she rushed into a battle with the evil Negaverse. As a child, I loved cartoons--especially the Japanese anime, "Sailor Moon." I spent countless afternoons watching episode after episode, season after season. In essence, the show became my childhood obsession; unluckily, it also became one of my parent's greatest annoyances.

As a Japanese series, the concepts and cultural differences in "Sailor Moon" greatly contrasted from those of American television. Those differences between American and Japanese culture obviously filled me with countless questions, questions that I would often voice to my parents at the most inconvenient of moments.

While my father silently read the newspaper on Sunday mornings, I would ask him about kimonos, Kotogakko uniforms, and the Japanese style of theater known as Bunraku. While my mother attempted to cook yet another failed casserole, I would interject my views on Japanese architecture, Japanese music, and the many traditional customs of the Japanese culture.

During school days, I resisted learning about anything that didn't relate to Japan. I would disrupt class periods to tell my classmates stories about an alien culture on the other side of the world where people ate with sticks and slept on hard floor mats. By the end of the year, I had even begun a Japanese trivia game. The culture had engulfed my world.

In all my memories of childhood, "Sailor Moon" is a pervading element. The Japanese anime was my first spark of passion for culture, a spark that eventually led to my discovery of other alien worlds and to the founding of my cultural club, XXX.

XXX helped to make me who I am today. More than that, it made me realize the oddity of how certain things can affect us. One juvenile anime changed my social opinions, and in turn, helped me to change the opinions of a dozen club members. It made them and myself more open, more accepting, and best of all, less likely to discriminate. One day, these members--myself included--will graduate and add their opinions to the social atmosphere of a college. Like a handshake, the tolerance they learned from XXX will touch a person from one community before going on to touch another, maybe their touches will even reach Japan. And all this because of a scantily-dressed heroine in a Saturday morning cartoon.