Hi everyone, I'd really appreciate a fresh perspective on my essay and as much feedback as you can think of. Thank you :)
Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
An anime trailer plays on Spacetoon, a pan-Arab children's television channel. Intently, I watch. I was eight but could still somehow fit in a high chair I had been attached to since infancy. A velvety voice reverberates around the room, narrating as a black-cloaked character leaps around the screen like a ninja. The voice addresses the enigmatic figure. "You are them, but you are not," it rumbles.
I didn't contemplate the philosophical implications of that statement-I was eight. I vividly remember it only because the narrator's voice was so charming that I had decided I must marry him, and to think it would be an accurate reflection of my childhood identity was unexpected.
I grew up as a Third Culture Kid, that convoluted term sociologists use to describe the citizens of everywhere and nowhere. I was a walking oxymoron stuck in limbo, going tongue-tied when people asked where I was from. What do I say exactly? Options spun through my mind: A) Your birth country, B) Where you've lived the longest, C) Where your parents are from, or D) Your ethnicity.
Option D was an enigma of its own; see, I'm North African of all things, and for a people so remarkably diverse, it's unsurprising to feel imposterous when clumped into one. A serpent whispered me a poser when I claimed my African identity, because I didn't look like what the world deems "African." It hissed the same when I claimed my Indigenous identity, because although I spoke Tamazight, I had the heavy "Arabized" accent and my blood was only a quarter Amazigh. Finally, it declared me a catfish when I huddled behind my Arab identity, because while my Roman nose gave the notion some credibility, that wasn't sufficient to bridge the chasm of differences separating North Africa from the Middle East.
I was a cultural drifter tenaciously seeking association with one group or the other.
Later, when I was 11, I began reading 50 pages every day. I started simple, enjoying children's fiction, but with time, reading cemented my descent into the world of "collective human culture," as I now dub it. I was enraptured by the complexity of old Nordic religion and its concept of the composite soul, dazzled by the eloquence of Homer's epics and Arabic Mu'allaqat, captivated by the mystique of Shikibu's tales of the Heian Japanese aristocracy, and enchanted by the commanding presence of Gothic architecture.
I basked in all that makes humanity breathe and sing, and one evening, when I was 17, a spark ignited my mind. I read, I saw, I thought about mankind. Fundamentally, we dwell on one spiritual plane, therefore humans are more interconnected than disparate. The history of the Norse is a history of all of us, just like Spanish Flamenco is the passion of us all. Vermeer's oils on canvas are paintings of all of us, just like Mahmoud Darwish's poetry is the emotion of us all.
Ultimately, the thirst of our souls is quenched by the same things, and our passion soars with the same wings; the arts embody what every human feels and what every human is.
If even mankind in all its immensity is a hive rather than a miscellany of disjointed colonies, connected so profoundly through different forms of human expression, then my various identities adhere to mankind's nature too, I gathered that night. I'm everything but I'm not nothing, and I needn't desire a connection to one singular aspect of myself when all the groups I kin sing to the tune of human nature in butter-smooth unison. Today, when I'm asked the formerly dreaded question of my origins, I confidently say I'm Arab, American, African, Indigenous, and a citizen of humanity all at once, because within each of my identities dwells a soul that thirsts for the same prose and poetry, paint and music, history and philosophy, and all that makes humanity spectacularly human.
Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
An anime trailer plays on Spacetoon, a pan-Arab children's television channel. Intently, I watch. I was eight but could still somehow fit in a high chair I had been attached to since infancy. A velvety voice reverberates around the room, narrating as a black-cloaked character leaps around the screen like a ninja. The voice addresses the enigmatic figure. "You are them, but you are not," it rumbles.
I didn't contemplate the philosophical implications of that statement-I was eight. I vividly remember it only because the narrator's voice was so charming that I had decided I must marry him, and to think it would be an accurate reflection of my childhood identity was unexpected.
I grew up as a Third Culture Kid, that convoluted term sociologists use to describe the citizens of everywhere and nowhere. I was a walking oxymoron stuck in limbo, going tongue-tied when people asked where I was from. What do I say exactly? Options spun through my mind: A) Your birth country, B) Where you've lived the longest, C) Where your parents are from, or D) Your ethnicity.
Option D was an enigma of its own; see, I'm North African of all things, and for a people so remarkably diverse, it's unsurprising to feel imposterous when clumped into one. A serpent whispered me a poser when I claimed my African identity, because I didn't look like what the world deems "African." It hissed the same when I claimed my Indigenous identity, because although I spoke Tamazight, I had the heavy "Arabized" accent and my blood was only a quarter Amazigh. Finally, it declared me a catfish when I huddled behind my Arab identity, because while my Roman nose gave the notion some credibility, that wasn't sufficient to bridge the chasm of differences separating North Africa from the Middle East.
I was a cultural drifter tenaciously seeking association with one group or the other.
Later, when I was 11, I began reading 50 pages every day. I started simple, enjoying children's fiction, but with time, reading cemented my descent into the world of "collective human culture," as I now dub it. I was enraptured by the complexity of old Nordic religion and its concept of the composite soul, dazzled by the eloquence of Homer's epics and Arabic Mu'allaqat, captivated by the mystique of Shikibu's tales of the Heian Japanese aristocracy, and enchanted by the commanding presence of Gothic architecture.
I basked in all that makes humanity breathe and sing, and one evening, when I was 17, a spark ignited my mind. I read, I saw, I thought about mankind. Fundamentally, we dwell on one spiritual plane, therefore humans are more interconnected than disparate. The history of the Norse is a history of all of us, just like Spanish Flamenco is the passion of us all. Vermeer's oils on canvas are paintings of all of us, just like Mahmoud Darwish's poetry is the emotion of us all.
Ultimately, the thirst of our souls is quenched by the same things, and our passion soars with the same wings; the arts embody what every human feels and what every human is.
If even mankind in all its immensity is a hive rather than a miscellany of disjointed colonies, connected so profoundly through different forms of human expression, then my various identities adhere to mankind's nature too, I gathered that night. I'm everything but I'm not nothing, and I needn't desire a connection to one singular aspect of myself when all the groups I kin sing to the tune of human nature in butter-smooth unison. Today, when I'm asked the formerly dreaded question of my origins, I confidently say I'm Arab, American, African, Indigenous, and a citizen of humanity all at once, because within each of my identities dwells a soul that thirsts for the same prose and poetry, paint and music, history and philosophy, and all that makes humanity spectacularly human.
