Undergraduate /
My Heritage - in my own country I feel the most foreign. Common App. Essay [10]
Hi guys,
This is the essay I plan to use for the Common App. I would really appreciate your honest feedback. I will be applying to pretty difficult colleges (early decision to Columbia) so that is the kind of level of writing I'm aiming for. Thank you so much!
The prompt:
Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.It is a paradox that in my own country I feel the most foreign. I have spent much of my life outside of India, and moving from country to country has caused me to struggle for an identity. I was four when I moved from my place of birth, and spent the next thirteen years living abroad on the East and West coasts of the United States, as well as Switzerland and France. After the first stretch of eight or so years in the United States, my family began visiting India every couple of summers. The country had become a stranger to me, and each time we visited something deep inside of me would be exposed again. I was uncomfortable in India, unused to the heat, the filth, the traffic, the poor children tapping on car windows, the stares. I was reluctant to accept this place as an intrinsic part of me and my identity because I had seen so much else of the world-developed countries, with more obvious beauty and prosper to offer. I could only see what India lacked. The people's stares bothered me the most, because their worlds were so much smaller than mine, and their ideas so much simpler, yet they could see right through me and knew who I was better than I myself did.
India soon became a measure of my growth because each summer that I returned, I saw the country through wiser eyes. Being on the move so much had made me more open, more accepting. Then I learned that I would be spending my final year of high school here. I grappled with this idea, because as excited as I was for new adventures, I was not sure I was ready for this one. It was like returning home to a family whom you had left years ago. You wondered whether they would accept you back with open arms, but more than that, you wondered if you would accept them. Would things be as you remembered them; would it feel like home? Regardless, I returned home to the 'family' I had left.
At its core, this country is made up of millions of youth, struggling to make their mark on the world. I see them on the streets everyday on my way to school. It is not they who are any different from me, but their circumstances. Their delicate sugar-spun dreams, cradled and protected during ignorant childhood, have been slowly crushed by the calloused, sun-browned hand of a parent as they grow and learn about life and its infinite and unequal rules. I am luckier because I can afford to protect and nurture my dreams, build a cage around them, until they are strong enough to be set free. The only thing which I have that these children do not is money, yet it is powerful enough to guarantee a future.
Again, I am not any different from these youth, because growth has been pushed on both of us. In their case it is through their poverty and need to scrape by a living in any way possible. The impoverished are forced into jobs the minute they can walk, the minimum working age completely forgotten. It is as though there is no word in the Hindi language for 'child labor.' From looking into their eyes you can see that these children have become adults at far too early an age. In my case, bumping back and forth from different continents and countries, assimilating and then leaving societies, has caused me to learn the lessons of life much faster than most. The only thing I could count on to remain constant was me, and so I harbored an intimate relationship with myself. I soaked in endless culture and knowledge, and qualities materialized in me so that I could keep going. Optimism, confidence, acceptance of self and others, respect of self and others, empathy, self-sufficiency-I am thankful for what these countries have taught me.
And although I see myself as a worldly person, I cannot deny my heritage. It looks at me in the mirror each morning; it is the color of my skin, the shape of my eyes, the blood that runs in my veins. I used to look at Indians and judge them as parochial, and it is because of this ignorant, single-faceted judgement that I sometimes wished I looked different. I did not want to be judged by others in the same way I myself judged. The evil I tried to protect myself from was in me, too. It was an ugly irony.
I cannot change the world, but I can change myself. This is what slowly happened as I grew-I learned that the best things in life are not always the most obvious, which was the case for my home country. My final move back to India was the most difficult; it was personal and I had to reveal the vulnerability in me that I had hidden for so long to be able to survive elsewhere in the world, a vulnerability that sprang from the uncertainty of my identity.
I have a clear memory of a trip to an Indian restaurant in the first month of our move here. It was a difficult time for me, but my spirits lifted instantly upon walking through the door. Brightly clothed families bustled around, their faces full of life, and children of all ages chattered animatedly with each other while pointing at sweets behind the sparkling glass displays. I felt the smile growing slowly on my face, because I was proud. This was a rising country that did not need to climb onto the back of other, more developed countries to become something it was not. It used its own unique strengths to progress. I felt at home, and I started accepting the part of me that had always been there and was fighting to come out. Its persistence won. This was my country.
