Hi there,
Here's the essay I plan to use for the common application. I'm planning to apply to Harvard under Restricted Early Action. ANY critique or advice or edits are GREATLY appreciated!
Regarding the prompt that best fits the essay: I've been debating which prompt to choose. I'm stuck between these two, so any advice would really help:
1)Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you. (Christine's death being the experience)
2)Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence. (Christine being the person)
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Christine
Poison, to me, had always been the blend of foreign chemicals in that little green bottle with skull-and-crossbones plastered on it in my morning cartoons. I would laugh at the characters that got sick after they accidentally took a swig from the telltale vial instead of their glass of milk. I laughed because even though I was aware that actual poison was real and dangerous, I could never imagine encountering it within the limited sphere of my suburban childhood. However, when my mother informed me one summer morning with heartbroken solemnity that my Aunt Christine had passed away, I felt closer than ever to a poison that I had never known could be so devastating: alcohol.
I couldn't perceive the blunt reality of Christine's death at the age of forty, even after I watched her casket lowered into the earth at the local cemetery a few days later. She had never failed to radiate a playful vitality at our family occasions, where she was the star slugger in nearly every kickball game and the uncannily lucky gambler in boisterous rounds of "Left-Right-Center". She wore a magnetic smile that weathered brilliant Easter mornings and gloomy autumn afternoons alike. How could someone with so much love for living die?
My parents tried to tell me that Christine had long battled an addiction to alcohol, a fight that she eventually lost when her vital organs failed as she slept one night. It couldn't be. Alcohol only made her and Grampa and Auntie Lisa and Uncle Mike louder and happier at the family Christmas party; it didn't kill them. People died in car accidents and cancer wards, not in the kitchen over a few glasses of wine. No matter how frustrated or confused I became, however, I couldn't change the fact that I was never going to see Christine again.
As I've grown increasingly educated about alcohol's effect on the body and the mind in the six years since Christine passed, her life away from the four or five family gatherings per year has begun to materialize in my imagination. I imagine countless days and nights she spent alone and distraught, where alcohol was her only companion. I can likewise picture the helplessness she felt when the pull of her dependence became too great to overcome during her attempts at sobriety.
Even though Christine passed away six years ago, she still lives with me in the lessons that her life has taught me. She reminds me to observe moderation so that no addiction to substance may poison my life the way it did hers, and she urges me to enjoy and embrace the life that I've been given because it may be snuffed out a bit too early. I only knew Christine for the first eleven years of my life, but she has become a martyr to me whose cause will remain with me forever.
I think essay prompt number 2 would better fit.
In terms of the essay itself, it starts strong, but you should try to come back to how it affected you/how you have changed because of this. Otherwise, the focus might be too much on the tragedy of your aunt's death, and less of its influence on your character. I'd say to maybe condense what you have and expand on describing yourself, because that's the most important part when it comes to what you want to show.
If you have a chance, take a look at mine too :) I might also be applying early action to Harvard.
Tall ship,
I really appreciate the thoughts. I read your essay, and I can only say I wish my writing were as powerful as yours!
As I wrote the piece I knew the topic risked focusing on my aunt more than myself. However, wanted to develop her as a character sufficiently so that her impact on me (described in the final paragraph) would be understood properly. How do you suggest I condense the first part of the essay?
