WILLIAMS COLLEGE
Imagine looking through a window at any environment that is particularly significant to you. Reflect on the scene, paying close attention to the relation between what you are seeing and why it is meaningful to you. Please limit your statement to 300 words.*It's hot. My skin is melting. My tongue cries for water. My face yearns for a breeze. My muscles ache. I feel miserable, yet this is my motherland-El Salvador.
Zoom out: All I see are miles and miles of corn lulled to a placebo state by rhythmic hills. Under the unforgiving sun they dance to the song of the wind, as their roots stretch down burring into the soil of my ancestors.
Zoom In: Buses. Blue, green, yellow, red: the streets come alive with intoxicating colors as buses after buses filled to the brim with sweating people mill through villages. They are filled with laughter, shouts, cries, and silence. Upon each and every one of these buses are pictures of Jesus: El Salvador-"The Savior".
Zoom out: The separation between the sky and the sea seems to not exist. All is a brilliant blue: pure. There are no factories, no smug, no excess pollution caused by the industrialization of civilization. It's a marvel at the simplicity of lives here; it's beautiful.
Zoom In: My hands are rough. Alongside my father, mother, and grandparents, I have worked hard. These hands are a staple of Salvadorian strength. I accept my culture. It has been the foundation to my personality. Without it, as I look out at my father working in front of the house he built with his own hands, I realize I would not be me. I would not me an ambitious, strong willed, adventurous, creative, and open individual. My Salvadorian nationality supplements my American nationality as it keeps me grounded in the advancements of my future. My parents history in El Salvador prompted them to follow the American dream; it prompts me to fulfill their dream.
It's an uphill struggle-my muscles will ache-but I will succeed.
COLUMBIA U
For applicants to Columbia College, please tell us what from your current and past experiences (either academic or personal) attracts you specifically to the field or fields of study that you noted in the Member Questions section. If you are currently undecided, please write about any field or fields in which you may have an interest at this time. (300 words or less)*
I'm 12. I'm alone. It's 6 pm. It's cold. And I'm alone.
I wait outside of Beech Springs Intermediate School for my mom to pick me up from Drama practice. Practice finished about an hour ago but my mom's late-she's always late.
Suddenly I see dim light round the corner: it's her. She's driving an old van, a 1994 Nissan Quest that would later be passed down to me. It has no heating. I climb into the back seat and wipe my hands on the seat.
My mom looks tired, so tired. As we approach the dark, narrow road that will take us home we see lights: blue, red, white, blue, red, white, blue red, white. My heart starts to beat rapidly, my palms get sweaty, I feel like throwing up; not again please not again. We stop as a police officer flags my mom down; she roles how her window and looks at him with tired eyes.
"License please."
I take off my seatbelt and lean over my mom and politely tell the police man that she doesn't have one. He tells me to sit down and asks my mom again:
"License. Now."
This has happened before; this exact scene. She struggles to say the words "I don't have one, sir" -the belittling begins.
I've seen it happen over and over-the discrimination and injustice that my parents face for the nature of their appearance, of their tongue, of their socioeconomic status.
Theater has become my outlet--my passion--therefore I elect to use it as a tool to fight. Theater allows ideas to impregnate the minds of complacent members of society by captivating and inciting their intellectual and emotional perceptions. It gives voice to a smorgasbord of political and social movements-voice to my mother and father
