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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 have always been a fighter. I left my home in China, and arrived at Wisconsin Lutheran High School(WLHS) when I was 15-year-old. Speaking little English and knowing nothing about popular TV shows, I often stood outside American students' friend circle, perplexed and not knowing what to do. I fought, but failed, to overcome our differences.
Had I been equipped with better English skills, this process would probably have been easier. A year later I transferred to an all-girls boarding school, and I was able to connect with more friends. On a winter morning I walked into our dining hall. At one table sat a group of juniors, all of whom were my American friends. At the adjacent table sat two Chinese girls, who enthusiastically greeted me: "Hey Amber! Come sit over here." My American friends, Julia and Emily, turned around, waved at me but didn't say anything.
For a lot of girls this would merely be the action of choosing one group of friends over the other. Yet for me it was exactly the predicament with which I had struggled throughout my high school years: I liked my American friends, yet to sit with them was to "abandon" my ethnic origin, my roots. So I decided to take a different route. I awkwardly stood between the two tables and laughed self-deprecatingly: "Why am I so popular? I don't even know which table I should sit at!" Julia and Emily's laughter dissolved the tension, and they invited everyone to sit at their table instead.
Sometimes the division between the "us" and the "them" is more challenging to tackle. In the beginning of this semester, an American girl performed a feminist poem in front of the entire school. In her emotional delivery she described the harsh conditions still faced by many women in the world, one of which was that "women in China have to wear black-haired stockings to avoid rape." This single line angered the Chinese student community to an extreme, for the black-hair stockings are merely a running joke on Chinese internet. Without any context it was a misrepresentation of China as a culturally backward society, and many American students took it in without a doubt.
Many of the Chinese students feared to overreact. We were infuriated, yet we were also afraid to be the trouble-makers. "But I am ready to fight," I said in a conversation with international student advisor, "I am not going to let go." In fact I knew so many Chinese students before us who had similar experience, but they chose to shake heads and ignore. Had they done something, this probably would not have happened. So I stood up in front of the entire school, holding a carefully worded script, my hands slightly sweaty. I started out by clarifying the misconception and went on to encourage two-way communications: "if boarding school has helped us establish long-term relationships, why not use them to inform each other? Aren't honesty and open-mindedness our most effective weapons to tackle our fear of the unknown, of 'the other'?"
Indeed there has been many accomplishments of which I am proud throughout high school - varsity sports letters, academic awards, leadership positions - yet it was such moments, when I fought to dissolve the unseen boundaries, that made me happy with the person whom I have become. When I rise to the challenges, my goal is never to fight against somebody, since that only leads to alienation. I hope to fight for something, for gender equality and racial justice, for something that affects me and many others. The road forward will consist of clashes and conflicts for sure, but as Brendan Kennelly, a great Irish poet, once said:"if [I] want to serve the age, [I must] betray it."
word count: 624
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 have always been a fighter. I left my home in China, and arrived at Wisconsin Lutheran High School(WLHS) when I was 15-year-old. Speaking little English and knowing nothing about popular TV shows, I often stood outside American students' friend circle, perplexed and not knowing what to do. I fought, but failed, to overcome our differences.
Had I been equipped with better English skills, this process would probably have been easier. A year later I transferred to an all-girls boarding school, and I was able to connect with more friends. On a winter morning I walked into our dining hall. At one table sat a group of juniors, all of whom were my American friends. At the adjacent table sat two Chinese girls, who enthusiastically greeted me: "Hey Amber! Come sit over here." My American friends, Julia and Emily, turned around, waved at me but didn't say anything.
For a lot of girls this would merely be the action of choosing one group of friends over the other. Yet for me it was exactly the predicament with which I had struggled throughout my high school years: I liked my American friends, yet to sit with them was to "abandon" my ethnic origin, my roots. So I decided to take a different route. I awkwardly stood between the two tables and laughed self-deprecatingly: "Why am I so popular? I don't even know which table I should sit at!" Julia and Emily's laughter dissolved the tension, and they invited everyone to sit at their table instead.
Sometimes the division between the "us" and the "them" is more challenging to tackle. In the beginning of this semester, an American girl performed a feminist poem in front of the entire school. In her emotional delivery she described the harsh conditions still faced by many women in the world, one of which was that "women in China have to wear black-haired stockings to avoid rape." This single line angered the Chinese student community to an extreme, for the black-hair stockings are merely a running joke on Chinese internet. Without any context it was a misrepresentation of China as a culturally backward society, and many American students took it in without a doubt.
Many of the Chinese students feared to overreact. We were infuriated, yet we were also afraid to be the trouble-makers. "But I am ready to fight," I said in a conversation with international student advisor, "I am not going to let go." In fact I knew so many Chinese students before us who had similar experience, but they chose to shake heads and ignore. Had they done something, this probably would not have happened. So I stood up in front of the entire school, holding a carefully worded script, my hands slightly sweaty. I started out by clarifying the misconception and went on to encourage two-way communications: "if boarding school has helped us establish long-term relationships, why not use them to inform each other? Aren't honesty and open-mindedness our most effective weapons to tackle our fear of the unknown, of 'the other'?"
Indeed there has been many accomplishments of which I am proud throughout high school - varsity sports letters, academic awards, leadership positions - yet it was such moments, when I fought to dissolve the unseen boundaries, that made me happy with the person whom I have become. When I rise to the challenges, my goal is never to fight against somebody, since that only leads to alienation. I hope to fight for something, for gender equality and racial justice, for something that affects me and many others. The road forward will consist of clashes and conflicts for sure, but as Brendan Kennelly, a great Irish poet, once said:"if [I] want to serve the age, [I must] betray it."
word count: 624
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