Common App Prompt 5 - Personal Growth through Spanish Dance

5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

"Don't Think"

I was dancing the salsa, dressed in authentic colombian attire with a rose in my mouth when I first met my new school principal. Sweat dripped down my forehead as I synced my body to the sound of Alberto Barros's "La Palomita" while trying to sneak a glance at my professor's larger than life smile and his (almost) tears of joy.

A week prior, we'd each been assigned the daunting task of performing a Latin American dance and teaching it to the class. No worries, I thought. I know how to teach. I know how to give a presentation. There was just one small thing holding me back: I had never learned to dance.

And there was no way I was going to dance in front of the class, not only because I'd look like a fool, but because I doubted I actually could -- heck, I can barely walk down a flat sidewalk without tripping on my own shoes.

Nevertheless,that night I pulled out spotify, and invited in the culture of Colombia to my home. To savor the taste of Grandma's leftover brisket from our Rosh Hashanah dinner, to temporarily regret Grandma's brisket while laying on the couch. To study calculus and chemistry and world history. And I didn't think about the dance (or lack-thereof) once.

So I had the music, the rhythm, and the end goal: the dance. Now I only just had to get there.

I took an engineering approach to the dance and decided on a "divide and conquer" method. I would learn the arm movements, the leg movements, then what to do with my body and head and finally put it all together. It seemed like nothing more than a simple process, not unlike implicit differentiation or equilibrium reactions.

I had spent hours figuring out the exact height to which I'd raise my left leg before alternating with my right and at which angle to do so. On finding the ideal time lapse between arm rotations and full body twists, between the dips and final bows, striving to create a memorable 73-second experience.

And yet, when I watched the self-recorded video of the final product, the only way to describe it was: "odd". I mean, I was dancing the salsa, yet I lacked that little bit of oomph. In a way I was more Frankenstein's Monster than Joaquín Cortés. Created, programmed step-by-step. But the presentation was tomorrow, what else was there to do?

It was five minutes till I was to present, and with Bernhard Kahn's masterpiece playing in the hall, I was practicing my "walk". As I made my final preparations, my professor joined me in the hall, noting my obvious tension and stiffness, to which he told me "Don't think about it" followed by his (in)famous phrase "It's not the ACT."

Don't think, I thought to myself, awaiting the all-too-familiar "pum pum" beat and the 16-second mark where I would begin.

And so "La Palomita" began again, and I started anew.

And I didn't think about the dance. I didn't think about blueprint that I had created, nor about how the school principal and other administration personnel walked in just prior.

Rather, I felt it. I felt the rhythm, the beat, the countless hours of "pum pum" and "palomita." I felt the culture and I felt connected. I didn't think about the dance, I just did it. My hips swayed, my legs planted smoothly on the ground and in a rhythm not calculated by math, but rather by feeling. By emotion.

It was in that moment that I experienced something all but forgotten in the recent years of studying and working, that simple feeling of a kid going down a slide, or ziplining through the forest: pure, unengineered, uncalculated, worryless fun.

Not everything has to be created or solved, some things you just do for the heck of it. It's fun.

Thinking was my past. Doing is my future.

Hi Ethan! Welcome to EF. I really like what you have written; it is engaging, funny, and descriptive. However, this is also the problem. It reads like a story and not like an essay. You have not discussed the event or accomplishment in essay format. You have not included what is expected, such as how this experience changed you, influenced your growth, what you learned, etc.... This prompt is really an opportunity for you to show yourself in a deeper way and how you have changed in a positive way because of this event. Your essay only focuses on the even without any of the good stuff they really want to know. You are attempting it fit all of this in in the last two lines of your essay rather than dedicating a good third of your essay to it.

If you want to stick with this story as your event/ accomplishment, think about it as it relates to the rest of the prompt. What period of transition, growth, or new thinking did this experience inspire? How did your understanding of yourself or others change because of this experience? For this specific experience, how did your dedication to this dance influence you? How did you develop as a student or as a person? It seems to me that the major developments are perseverance as a student despite dance not being of interest to you, and learning to let go a little bit and not be so methodical or analytical about everything in life. It has to be more than just doing over thinking. Be specific. Doing over thinking might be the transition and start of growth, but what is the ultimate ending where your understanding has been changed?

Also, your essay reads much too informally. I think because you are trying to tell a story instead of writing an essay.

Ethan, if you want to use a casual, conversational tone in your essay, then that is your personal prerogative. It is not for us to judge how you want to write the essay. Nobody can tell how the reviewer will receive the way that you wrote the essay. In this instance, your essay takes on a more natural, more conversational tone which helps to put the reviewer at ease with your writing style and the information you have to share. That happens a lot in narrative driven essays that students use to respond to common app prompts. It doesn't mean that you did not write it properly, It just means that you are more comfortable writing in that manner. It doesn't reflect badly on you nor will the reviewer reject what you wrote just because of the tone.

You can tell when a prompt requires a formal tone. The prompt will set that stage for you as the writer. The point of view that you receive here is only meant to help you direct the essay towards a more relevant and proper representation of the prompt. In this instance, you did tell a very interesting story as Katheryn said. However, the event and accomplishment doesn't really deliver an impressive finish.

I think the lack of the big finish is because this is an event that you did not really connect with in reality. You just managed to get through the event, hence the accomplishment part. Your heart was not really into the telling of this story. It was just a story that responded to the prompt. It isn't enough that the story just fits the instructions. The story has to give the reviewer an insight into your personal development as well. This has to be a life altering, character shaking, trait shaping event that really delivers a clear depiction of your personal growth. This dance story falls short of that depiction. All it tells the reviewer is that you know how to get by and improvise when a situation calls for it. That is not exactly something that is considered personal growth. If you can try to find a more character driven story to tell, you should consider changing the story that you are using in the essay.

Maybe, you can consider a story about how you did not really connect with your heritage until you had to do this dance presentation. That would relate to a personal growth and new understanding of who you are. That allows you to use more of the current essay that you have, but with specific alterations to make it more interesting and relevant to the prompt expectation.

Hi, thanks for the feedback. Just a few questions.
"All it tells the reviewer is that you know how to get by and improvise when a situation calls for it." I was trying to get across that I wasn't just improvising, but rather I put effort into it... so much that I over analyzed it and look more like a robot. The "realization" was that not everything can be programmed or engineered. Do you think I could make that more clear if I just spent a little more time talking about other instances that this event affected me?

"did not really connect with your heritage until you had to do this dance presentation" Also I can't do this because this isn't my heritage...

Also, what if I were to change the prompt to a prompt of my own choosing and talked about leaving my comfort zone?

@Holt
Hi, thanks for the feedback. Just a few questions.
"All it tells the reviewer is that you know how to get by and improvise when a situation calls for it." I was trying to get across that I wasn't just improvising, but rather I put effort into it... so much that I over analyzed it and look more like a robot. The "realization" was that not everything can be programmed or engineered. Do you think I could make that more clear if I just spent a little more time talking about other instances that this event affected me?

"did not really connect with your heritage until you had to do this dance presentation" Also I can't do this because this isn't my heritage...[/quote]

@Hiddengrace
does it have to be in essay format? can't it just be a story with added insight?