This is my best shot at the common app essay. Please take a look and critique as harshly as possible...
Prompt:Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Social Culture Club - Listening or Speaking?
On my bookshelf, between Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, lies the only book I have refused to read, aptly titled Listening: The Forgotten Skill. The self-help guide was a "gift" from my Dad, which meant that he secretly put the book on my bookshelf, hoping I would stumble upon it and read it. Stumble upon it I did. Read it-well, that never happened.
My family has always considered me the loquacious child, too talkative for his own good. In fact, I didn't know the meaning of a phrase like "shut up" until at least the fourth grade. Little did I know music was going to change all of that-listening rather than speaking was going to become a crucial part of my life, as a musician, as a debater, and as an individual.
In the 5th grade I was introduced to the clarinet by my band teacher. I knew instantly that instrument was mine. To me, playing the clarinet was just like speaking, except with Beethoven, not my flesh and blood friends. Interestingly, however, I liked playing by myself, which meant I was a musical "loner," though I was a social butterfly. But, my lonesome clarinet world was soon shattered; I was chosen as a member of the Sacramento Youth Symphony.
On the first day of rehearsal, I felt very nervous, knowing that the pieces I had rehearsed so diligently by myself now needed to be integrated with the rest of the orchestra. My fingers went numb and my mouth seemed to fill with cotton as I struggled to perform with the symphony. I couldn't help, but feel disappointed after the rehearsal. I felt like my clarinets speech was incongruous with the speech of the orchestra. They would "speak" a beautiful solo and I would respond in a cacophony of nonsense. I didn't know it then, but the medicine I required was readily available-listening, my forgotten skill.
Week after week I struggled, but gradually improved. "Speaking" through my clarinet was a skill that took dedication and practice, but playing in an orchestra required constant and attentive listening - a completely foreign skill to me.
As I matured I increasingly began to understand the value of listening in an orchestral setting. Performance, like speaking, is interactive. You have to respond to the pizzicato of the violins with a gentle staccato on the clarinet, you have to feel the tuba's angry forte and respond with a fervent fortissimo, and you must understand and respond to the feeling, the music, and the art. But my orchestra experience was only a first step; the next step began as I learned to truly listen to people.
Whereas in the symphony the need to perform with others forced me to listen, debate seems to be totally different-actually, they're quite similar. Between writing cases and the pandemonium of the argument, debate is as much about listening as it is speaking. I daresay, I have always found speaking easy, but as I learned to listen I opened up a whole new world. While I was getting by speaking, the more I listened the more privy I became to the logical fallacies of my opponents. But, the plastic trophies I won in debate cannot compete with the social surprises listening pampered me with.
By improving my listening, I noticed myself making stronger connections with my friends, family, and even strangers. As a member of my school's "Culture Club" I worked with foreign exchange students by listening to them explain the barriers they have to face just to communicate as I readily do. Listening added to my perspective by showing me the interactive relationships I could create with people who could not speak the language I was accustomed too. Listening also gave me its finest gift, a dream for the future. I am now set upon teaching, a profession that requires listening as a foundation. It is my dream to become a better teacher and listener, and it is my hope that they are one and the same. But until then, I will shamelessly admit I still have never read the book Listening: The Forgotten Skill, but I believe that I likely arrived at its meaning sitting wedged between a row of clarinet players, fingering the notes of Beethoven's 5th, and listening, yes me, listening.