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.
**I honestly need so much help with this essay (pretty cliche, I know) and my mind is failing me. Thanks, in advance!**
"Chink."
She tasted it on her tongue, and it reviled her. It was only five letters...five innocent letters that combined to form a spiteful and disgusting word.
Glaring at the boy who had hurled this insult, she shouted back, "I'm not even Chinese, stupid!"
Her comebacks as a seven year-old were breathtaking.
She watched him snigger, turn to his cluster of friends, and then point at her. "Ching chong ting tong!" She watched as they all seemed to collapse in laughter.
There was something wet at the corners of her eyes. Lightly brushing her fingertips over her face, she found the evidence and stared at it in curiosity. Then, all of a sudden, she spun around, with her pigtails flying and her mouth twisted into an ironic smirk, and drew her fist back. The boy's eyes widened and watched as her fist
Pause.
This lovely picture of a sneering little Asian girl is me, experiencing for the first times the physical torments of a culture shock. As you can tell by the crazed rabid-dog look in my eyes, I am emotionally unstable, and, if you haven't noticed, have recently discovered a new function for my fists.
Fast forward.
Seven years have gone by. The girl is still adjusting to the complexities of American society, but she is learning fast. She understands that anything different will be ostracized.
At the supermarket, she watches furiously as a group of older teenagers walks by her father and makes fun of his Korean accent.Yellow slit-eyed chink. At home, she helps her dad practice his English, but he still cannot say a simple "I am an American" without stumbling and adding a few syllables here and there.
At school, she buries her nose in books, books, and more books. She busies herself by competing in math, spelling bee, violin, and piano competitions. She stops responding to her parents in Korean and instead forces them to understand her English.
Fast forward.
One night she finds herself alone, with a book as her sole companion. Her eyes feel hot, and her nose drips something nasty, as she focuses on the blurry page in front of her. She reads the powerful quiet daring words again:
"You can't change who you are. No matter how you struggle, some things will never change. And maybe they shouldn't."
Pause.
I remember laughing at my childishness, at the childishness of others. Did I really loathe my identity that much?
I grimace every time I think about how I had abandoned my mother tongue. Watching my Korean-American peers speak so fluently and effortlessly, I berate myself for throwing away my native language. Trying to relearn Korean had been a grueling process for me. Understanding it was easy. Speaking it, on other hand, was torturous. The years spent working on my American accent could not disappear so easily; my friends constantly teased me for speaking like a "white girl." And, in the midst of it all, I realized how much time I had wasted trying to rid myself of what made me...me.
Fast forward.
She is sitting at a table in her favorite café. Absorbed in her Spanish homework, she does not notice as a haggard-looking group trudges in, obviously weary from their trip. Their loud exclamations shatter the comfortable silence.
Her ears pick up broken segments of conversations, and she looks up. She realizes that they are Korean, and they are asking for directions. No one understands them. One man, the leader, pushes a hand through his hair in frustration, crumpling the map in his hand. In that moment, she understands it all.
She smiles and stands up. In Korean, she asks, "Excuse me, are you lost?"
Play.
The way you wrote the story does not make it clear that you are the child in the story. You switch from telling the story of an unidentified little girl to suddenly taking responsibility for what happened then switching back again. Clearly that is a formatting problem in your essay which will leave the admissions officer confused when reading this. As a central identity story about a language barrier, you need to make sure that you represent yourself from the very beginning. Try to convey these emotions from the various events that happened in your life into one thought provoking, clear, and concise essay. While your paper may work as a draft for creative story writing, it does not work at all in response to the prompt based upon the reasons I mentioned. As a central identity story, the story just does not make it very clear that the situations presented are all about you.
@vangiespen
Thank you very much!
Truth be told, I was skeptical of the formatting myself, but I just didn't know how to differentiate myself from all the other "Asian-American identity" essays. I figured using this approach would sort of help, but it just ended up too confusing.
I will certainly take your advice into consideration!
