Posts by carnivorousgods

carnivorousgods

Oct 5, 2014

Undergraduate / "Politics and Sexuality" - Common Application [3]

Thanks so much for your feedback! I was a little uncertain about using "queer" in this context. It is actually the term I use to identify myself, but I really don't have the space to go into the ideology behind reclaiming slurs in this essay, haha. That's sort of a general issue I've been running into--this is actually exactly at the word limit, so any changes I make mean that something else has to go.

I'll definitely take your comments into consideration when I revise! This has given me some excellent points to expand on. Thanks again! :)

carnivorousgods

Oct 5, 2014

Undergraduate / Let your struggles become your motivation - Common App Prompt 1 Essay [4]

Overall, I think this is well written but skeletal. There are the bare bones of your father's experiences with medical issues, and a related anecdote about struggling and ultimately succeeding in a challenging class. I think it could be improved in three major ways:

1. Connect the health struggles to your academic struggles. Maybe something about how your family's constant overcoming of struggles has bled into your own life? How does witnessing your father's struggles inspire you to approach other struggles in the same way? How, specifically, did you utilize the resources available to you? Try to draw a more direct comparison between the issues with your father and the issues at school.

2. Flesh out how this affects you at a personal level. I agree with the other commenter who said that this feels like something of a creative writing exercise. Because we don't know anything about you or events in your life, this feels too much like a description of events. It's too removed from you, and how you handle things. Ask yourself how this has affected you, and how it's made you feel. How does it impact your life now? Why is this experience in particular the one that has motivated you to do well in school, or brought you to the point you're at now? How has it motivated you?

3. Add sensory details. I think that this is mainly a stylistic thing, but it will help the audience connect with you. What did it feel like to travel from hospital to hospital in the back of your parents' car? Were you concerned for your father? Worried about the future? Hopeful that this might be the last hospital you had to visit? Adding things like that will help the reader connect to your story.

I think that this has the potential to be an excellent essay once you've fleshed it out more. Good luck!

carnivorousgods

Oct 5, 2014

Undergraduate / "Politics and Sexuality" - Common Application [3]

This is my personal statement for the Common Application. I'm hoping for some feedback on any grammar issues, and any places where it's stilted/awkward/weird. I've been looking at it for so long that I really need some objective opinions. Thank you in advance!

Prompt: Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Thanksgiving, family dinner. The scene is set: two parallel lines of bowls and plates piled with mashed potatoes and casseroles, heaped with thick gravies and salted to high heaven. The turkey is cooling and rubbery on the stovetop, the juiciest parts picked clean. We don't eat at the table or on fine china for this holiday or any other, so my family-immediate and extended-is crowded in the kitchen, picking at the leftovers on their paper plates.

The conversation is usually stilted; I imagine that I'm a mathematician, and that my duty for the evening is to develop a formula to predict interactions. It's a linear function, because the independent variables (their questions to me) always produce the same result. Every year: Do you have a boyfriend now? No, I say back, like clockwork. I'm focusing on school. And then, oh, that's too bad. I don't comment on this, even when I'm aching to. Why aren't my academics as valued as my love life?

Even when we aren't talking about politicians, the Thanksgiving conversations are highly political. My family is mostly conservative, especially the extended bits that make the yearly pilgrimage to our house for Thanksgiving dinner. My uncles and cousins are a steady reminder of how little they think of me-this is less about their conservative politics and more about their ingrained misogyny. The endless return to how they value my relationships more than my beliefs, my academics, my reading list-any of the things I use to define myself. I'm not somebody's girlfriend or my father's daughter, but my own person first and foremost.

My politics and my beliefs are a reflection of myself. These aren't convictions I ascribe to without consideration. I have considered my options along the political spectrum. I have considered myself. I have a very strong sense of personal identity, and I believe that to be paramount in making any kind of decision-my choices reflect not only what I think, but who I am. I'm a woman and a feminist. I'm queer (and I use this here as the umbrella term for "not straight") and proud of it. I'm an autodidact. I value knowledge and its continued acquisition. I value understanding. I value the future.

My background-my self-identification as a feminist, as queer-isn't a convenient way to round out my college applications. It forms the foundation of the rest of my life, in the same way it's shaped my life up until now. The same consideration that once went into deciding how to label my political affiliations has gone into the decision to disclose this in my application. I'm still not sure if it's the right decision, but only time can tell that.

I don't want to stand around the kitchen on Thanksgiving anymore, watching my uncle pick at the macaroni salad and act like the glass ceiling is broken, or hearing my cousins talk about how nasty it is that there's a queer support group at their school. I'm tired of it.

But my future isn't going to be a series of Thanksgiving dinners, waiting for my family members to say something offensive. It won't be another year of picking at warm rolls while I pretend I can't hear derogatory comment after derogatory comment.

This Thanksgiving will mark the start of a piecewise function, or maybe a function that isn't really quantifiable at all. I won't be giving my usual answers-this year, I'm going to be fortified with the knowledge that a lot of this is temporary. I'm becoming a different person, but I'll always go back to this: I'm a feminist. I'm not straight. I can look someone in the eye and tell them that they're wrong. I can overcome the obstacles society sets for me. And this year, I will go to Thanksgiving dinner armed with my beliefs, and ready to speak up for them.