Hello!
So I am trying to write my college essay for the common application, I am applying for Fall 2012. If it helps, I am applying to Colorado College, Reed College, Goucher and Prescott -all of which are smaller intellectual outdoorsy schools. I am trying to show my qualities (optimistic, bubbly, caring) in an imaginative manner. For a little background, I attended a Waldorf school for 10 years (2 years k-8) which is centered on anthroposophy, and I am a very visual and artistic person. I did Amigos de las Americas, and spent 2 months living on a farm in a rural village in Paraguay. While there, I taught about health, deforestation, proper trash desposal etc in the local school, built 16 latrines for the local families, and collaborated with the Peace corp to plant trees with the children. It was an incredible, eye opening experience. The paraguayan lifestyle was relaxed and simple, and I try to incooperate it into my life back in California.
I want to add something about Waldorf but I don't know where. I also want to beef up the kitchen paragraph. Current word count is 763 and the limit is 1000, but I am going for clear and concise, so I would not mind it being shorter
Feedback and ideas are welcome! Here is my rough draft.
6 - Topic of your choice
The best way to know me is to spend a day with me in the backcountry, so join me for a day of backpacking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The first thing you will learn is that I wake up too early, and too happy. At least that is what I am told. I enjoy the serenity of morning, and it puts a smile on my face. I would take icy morning air over an alarm clock any and every day. Next you would hear that I like to sing while I boil water and pack my backpack. Sometimes songs from the radio, sometimes hymns and ditties I learned during my seven years in a choir. If we are packing gear and something needs to be carried, I will take the extra weight. I am small, so I like proving to myself that I am capable.
On the trail, I am fond of riddles. I quickly discovered that an active mind and good conversation helps the miles melt. When we reach the rock-climbing site, you will see my enthusiasm and determination. I spent a year working at a ropes course, and I am comfortable belaying, confident in the ropes and gear, and I relish heights. When I tie in my harness and examine the rock face before me, I have every intention of touching the webbing at the top. Being 5'2" makes climbing difficult, I jump when others reach, but it brings out my competitive side. I am not a great rock climber, my best climb outside was a 5.9, but I am passionate, devoted, and determined. "In the zone," I can almost ignore my arachnophobia as I wedge my gnarled fingers into web-filled cracks, the granite clawing at the delicate henna-like designs I penned on the back of my left hand.
Back on the trail, odds are that at some point I will mention Paraguay. I spent two months volunteering in Paraguarí, on a farm in a rural village. The simple life was refreshing, and it mirrors my experience of the backcountry. I go to the backcountry to escape, question and hopefully understand. In Paraguay, life is tranquilopa. My time there taught me that I did not have to tie myself in knots while trying to conform to the American lifestyle. Bring a part of someone else's life, gave me a new perspective on my own. Realistically, I am still a teenage girl in California, but I try to exude the relaxed Paraguayan manner.
Though I love the trail, and some good bushwhacking for that matter, we should pick out a campsite. Following LNT (Leave no trace) principles, it must by on a durable surface, such as rock, or packed dirt, hidden from the trail, and more than two hundred feet from water. I love water. After carrying water on a backpacking trip in Joshua tree, I will never take for granted the abundance of lakes and rivers in the Sierra. So the sun is out, and we picked a campsite on a rock slab by the Kings River. I love arriving at camp while the sun is out. I can brave the coldest snow run-off, as long as the sun warms me afterward. However, I am the first in three generations to display the fair complexion and orange hair that sparked my ongoing battle with the sun, so I will not lie idle for long. I have more than enough freckles.
Backcountry dinners are usually a gamble, but I get innovative in the bare kitchen. The key is the spice kit, but whenever that fails, I can always rely on hot sauce to salvage a meal. I may be pale and bug-eyed, but my mother was raised an ex-patriot in Jakarta, and I know how to handle spices.
After dinner, as the moon rises, I pull my journal and a collection of worn down watercolor pencils from the brain of my back. Sometimes I write about my day with accompanying illustrations, sometimes I draw the beauty in front of me, and sometimes I draw what the beauty inspires. Since I was little, I have drawn fanciful flowers and designs. But tonight, I draw a mandala. I start with petals, then spikes and spires; I weave the lines and shade the colors. Careful swipes of water awaken the pencils pigments, and I sigh in satisfaction. On the bottom of the page, I write a word in the rudimentary calligraphy I cherish from Waldorf School. In the native Paraguayan tongue, Guaraní, there is one word that embodies everything good, happy, and beautiful, Ipóra.
Also, title ideas?
Nice to meet you. I think what you need is the idea through your whole essay.
You have a good and an interesting view, what a vivid story! , and it makes you have a lot of things to mention in detail.
But in each paragraph you should have one topic sentence, it's better to help you link other ideas and the readers will find it interesting in your story. You can fix some sentences to avoid repetitive words, make your two or three sentences be shortened but they still express your ideas and your thoughts, and therefore it also can help you add more your ideas and stories, remember the topic and link, it will help you notice more about your writing way and using the approriate words to describe, not in too detail, people will find it interesting and know more you, surely - a kind and cute girl. :)
Let's try to review your whole essay, after rearrange your ideas and some sentences, you write it again. Let your love and soul open more and you can discover a lot of interesting things of your life.
Thanks. :)
