I just finished my supplement for Boston College and I really want to see what you guys think! Thanks so much!
3. In his novel, Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann writes:
"We seldom know what we're hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear it as we will never hear it again. We return to the moment to experience it, I suppose, but we can never really find it, only its memory, the faintest imprint of what it really was, what it meant."
Tell us about something you heard or experienced for the first time and how the years since have affected your perception of that moment.
"Get in the car!", my father bellowed, as I walked unwillingly to the car. It was an ordinary Sunday afternoon, and as usual I was in rotten mood because I had to make the trip down to Chinatown to pick up my grandmother. Acting like a typical child, I would pout and stomp the whole way, treating the weekly routine as if it was a nagging chore. All my other friends would be having play-dates and enjoying their Sunday afternoon, while I sat in silence commuting to a loud, busy place filled with Chinese people. I hated being different.
As years wore on and I began to mature, I grew fond of the weekly trip down to Chinatown, to the point where I would look forward to those couple of hours I had to walk around the city. It suddenly hit me that all of my friends, in my homogenous community, had the exact same routines during the week that consisted of soccer practice and Hebrew school. It wasn't until this pivotal realization that I began to cherish being different. It came to the point where my friends envied my opportunity to travel down to the city every weekend. However, friends aside, my perception of the trip being a dreaded chore, had blossomed into genuine love of being immersed in culture. Those couple of hours became my escape from conformity, an opportunity to learn more about my own culture. I now treasure the many times I get to break bread with my family in Chinatown, experiencing the comforting tastes of local cuisine to the exquisite nature of imported goods from mainland China. Through my weekly journey I also have the ability to satisfy my love for meeting new people through socialization with Chinatown natives. Ultimately, I cherish the plethora of knowledge I gained through conversations and the invaluable opportunity to speak my native language outside of the household.
As Colum McCann said, "We seldom know what we're hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear it as we will never hear it again." At first I perceived the trip down to Chinatown every week as a waste of time, but now as I reflect back on those days I realize that those hours dragging my feet were a crucial part of my development. That moment when my father yelled at me to get in the car was not an order, but an invitation to a world filled with culture that I would learn to love.
I really like your essay! Your writing kept me interested in that important moment in your life. You answered specially to the prompt and gave me a sense of who you are and why your perception of going to Chinatown has changed. My only advice is that since your over the 400 word limit maybe take out
As Colum McCann said, "We seldom know what we're hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear it as we will never hear it again."
This quote kinda disrupted the flow for me from the essay. If anything use a different quote so it doesn't seem like your just trying to throw a piece of the prompt onto the essay.
If you could, please read mine and give me your opinion :)
Good essay; you have some good ideas about your routines vs those of others, and being a bicultural person. There are a few cliches, like "escape from conformity", and quoting McCann in the final line detracts from the flow of the essay, but that's just me being nit-picky.
