Activity:
Act One, Scene One. The curtains open; the white-hot lights flick on with an electric hum. The silence in the audience is amplified by the omnipresent buzz of several dozen microphones, hidden within layers of the cast's clothing. All eyes are fixed center stage, waiting, wondering. Someone rustles a playbill; several rows back, another coughs. Backstage, we wait for our cue with bated breath.
The piano utters its first resonating note, and it's showtime.
Opening night, with its intangible mystique, is the crux of my lifelong love for the stage. In creating a character, I deconstruct my own inner workings. In hitting a note I long thought out of my range, I am empowered to try other impossibilities. In crying along with RENT, I feel the immense weight that theater can hold when done well. It has so much left to teach me, and I am so ready to learn.
Sec. School Interruption:
I decided to graduate as a junior from my (very small) Maine high school in order to further explore my foremost passion, equestrianism. As a lifelong rider living in a tiny community, I found that I had very limited opportunities to learn, compete, and network. After much communication and an extensive interview - which involved a three-day "audition" - I was offered a place as a working student in Olympian Phyllis Dawson's Team Windchase. Accomplishing this was one of my proudest moments - to be considered good enough to be a member of an Olympian's repertoire of staff is an incredible honor. I had never before seen horses, facilities, or riders of the caliber I encountered at Windchase.
Beyond the intense daily training I received, four other girls (all in their twenties) and I worked up to sixteen-hour days, doing jobs ranging from routine maintenance of the animals and stable, training young horses, assisting the veterinarian and farrier, birthing foals, and countless other assignments.
As the youngest in a team of five, and living away from home for the first time (an eight-hundred mile move), I often struggled to maintain the cool and calm composure I displayed outwardly. I was terribly homesick for the first three months, and it took some time to prove to my coworkers that I wasn't just a young and naïve high-school student. It would have been easy to pack it in and move home, giving the whole thing up as unsuccessful, but being there was a dream that I'd held onto since I was fourteen. Beyond that, I was quickly climbing the ranks in competition, meeting and networking with internationally renowned professionals, and gaining confidence in myself and my abilities which has certainly had an effect on all my other endeavors.
I emerged from the eight-month adventure a much more poised individual, harboring a more intrinsic understanding of what I need to do to be who I want to be. I welcome the next challenge with open arms, knowing that both the highs and the lows will shape me even more. Doubting myself, or my dreams, is not in my modus operandi; I will work as hard as I need to to achieve them. Gaining acceptance to a great school is my next Windchase.
Thank you! I will gladly return the favor if you'd like. :)
I really like your first sentence. This is some great use of language. The parentheses are used in a way that really adds interest.
How about putting a colon where that comma is in the first sentence.
The other material in parentheses, I think, detracts from the essay and should be removed. I think you should cut out those 2 parenthetical tid bits of info -- 800 mile move and them in their twenties )
The ending is excellent. :-)
Woah, I really don't know what to say. This essays truly stun me. You vividly depicted everything in your activity essay and the way your story was written, I believe, is characteristic of a College, rather than high school, senior.
Check out my essay to
Thank you!
I'm applying to Yale, Princeton, UPenn, Williams, Tufts, UMich, Northwestern, Tulane, Skidmore, Cornell, Vassar, Colgate, and UVA. :) Basically the most random list ever, but there is rhyme and reason for each, and not just "ooh, that sounds good!" Haha! :)
