Hello!
I am plannng to submit this essay for my common app.
I spent a lot of time on this and thus, I'd like to know how you guys think of this. I will appreciate all of your comments & critiques. Thank you!
Prompt:
A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.
"Now, watch." She began to stuff the plastic cup with paper towels. I watched silently, wondering at her demonstration, as the cup bulged out until it looked like a deformed egg of a giant bird, a crumpled white mess. The nurse poked the cup with a pen from above once or twice, then more forcefully. Crack. The cup gave in, shattering and spraying its pieces everywhere. The nurse looked into my eyes. "And this was your life."
Yes, that was my life.
Anyone who had taken a glance at my high school life would say nothing was missing from my experience, not a single opportunity. I was participating in varsity football, speech team, choir, mock trial, student government, the Catholic youth group, and robotics team, to name a few. And yes, all at once. My résumé was so full and rich, gilded with the pride of my quasi-omnipotence and overflowed with the glory of my countless achievements. Such was my misguided self-importance, my leviathan pride.
Yet my life, in fact, was not exactly as glamorous or complete as my résumé. What did I lack? I thought I should fill my emptiness by achieving no less than thousand things at once. A brilliant idea: the less time to worry about my time, the less worry about my time. With this "remedy" and my joy of impressing people with the sheer number of achievements, I thought I could overcome my existential anxiety. Oh, yes, why couldn't have Sartre and Camus thought about that.
But eventually, I had to face my anxiety for what I could not achieve. I was always dissatisfied by day and exhausted by night. I continued to struggle my way through, yet I didn't realize what I truly lacked: the sense of direction. The pressure was building up, and my life was about to explode. All it needed was a little nudge.
The pen that shattered my cup was an injury at a football game. A broken ankle means different things to different people: severe pain, an excuse not to go to school, or the stink from the three-month unwashed foot. To me, it meant the inability to continue those myriad activities I was participating or planning to participate in. I panicked. While waiting for surgery, I could not help but to tell the nurse about my anxious anticipation that I could not continue the myriads of activities. And she showed me, with a cup and a pen, what my life then was really about.
After breaking out of my former life, as a chick does after breaking out of an egg, I did not know what to follow. How could I suddenly give up all my achievements? But the months of inability sifted my obsession into finer grains of interest; I finally realized that I had passion for a few activities, such as speech club, journalism, and choir, even after taking hiatus. After my ankle healed, I returned to those activities and only those. Knowing my passion, I could finally enjoy my activities, and consequently, my life.
Now, as I gather my records for college admission, I give a glance at my résumé and cannot help but smile with a sense of irony. My vanity has surely decorated my records. But thanks to the nurse, now I know that those two dozen lines mean something less than my truer self. I have more to offer than my ability to do forty thousand things at once and complain about myself; I know where my passion lies.
I am plannng to submit this essay for my common app.
I spent a lot of time on this and thus, I'd like to know how you guys think of this. I will appreciate all of your comments & critiques. Thank you!
Prompt:
A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.
"Now, watch." She began to stuff the plastic cup with paper towels. I watched silently, wondering at her demonstration, as the cup bulged out until it looked like a deformed egg of a giant bird, a crumpled white mess. The nurse poked the cup with a pen from above once or twice, then more forcefully. Crack. The cup gave in, shattering and spraying its pieces everywhere. The nurse looked into my eyes. "And this was your life."
Yes, that was my life.
Anyone who had taken a glance at my high school life would say nothing was missing from my experience, not a single opportunity. I was participating in varsity football, speech team, choir, mock trial, student government, the Catholic youth group, and robotics team, to name a few. And yes, all at once. My résumé was so full and rich, gilded with the pride of my quasi-omnipotence and overflowed with the glory of my countless achievements. Such was my misguided self-importance, my leviathan pride.
Yet my life, in fact, was not exactly as glamorous or complete as my résumé. What did I lack? I thought I should fill my emptiness by achieving no less than thousand things at once. A brilliant idea: the less time to worry about my time, the less worry about my time. With this "remedy" and my joy of impressing people with the sheer number of achievements, I thought I could overcome my existential anxiety. Oh, yes, why couldn't have Sartre and Camus thought about that.
But eventually, I had to face my anxiety for what I could not achieve. I was always dissatisfied by day and exhausted by night. I continued to struggle my way through, yet I didn't realize what I truly lacked: the sense of direction. The pressure was building up, and my life was about to explode. All it needed was a little nudge.
The pen that shattered my cup was an injury at a football game. A broken ankle means different things to different people: severe pain, an excuse not to go to school, or the stink from the three-month unwashed foot. To me, it meant the inability to continue those myriad activities I was participating or planning to participate in. I panicked. While waiting for surgery, I could not help but to tell the nurse about my anxious anticipation that I could not continue the myriads of activities. And she showed me, with a cup and a pen, what my life then was really about.
After breaking out of my former life, as a chick does after breaking out of an egg, I did not know what to follow. How could I suddenly give up all my achievements? But the months of inability sifted my obsession into finer grains of interest; I finally realized that I had passion for a few activities, such as speech club, journalism, and choir, even after taking hiatus. After my ankle healed, I returned to those activities and only those. Knowing my passion, I could finally enjoy my activities, and consequently, my life.
Now, as I gather my records for college admission, I give a glance at my résumé and cannot help but smile with a sense of irony. My vanity has surely decorated my records. But thanks to the nurse, now I know that those two dozen lines mean something less than my truer self. I have more to offer than my ability to do forty thousand things at once and complain about myself; I know where my passion lies.
