Hello,
Below is my essay for the common application. I posted this one a couple days ago, but made some really drastic changes for it, so much that it's practically a new essay now. I have to submit this by friday, so please provide any comments/critique you have soon! also, please tell me specifically what you think of the ending..THANKS!
"Need help?" I look up to see a palm outstretched towards me.
I look down to see eighty feet of nothingness.
My muscles scream for rest, begging me to take that warm, welcoming hand and let it pull me up-let it pat me on the shoulder and say, "Maybe next time." But with only ten more feet to climb of the rock wall, I'm determined to finish the Project Adventure exercise by myself. The callous November wind urges me to surrender. Then, just as I extend my right hand up to grab my savior's, an image flashes through my head.
A painting. An illustration of two hands reaching out to each other-small, simple, and seemingly insignificant. But upon closer examination, one would notice the extraordinary amount of attention paid to the curves and lines of each hand, every fragile crevice and faint blue branch of the veins in each wrist. It was while creating this painting, at eleven-years-old, that I began to understand what my father has often told me: I have a strangely strong sense of observation.
While this keen eye has always served me well in enjoying fine art, I only started to appreciate its usefulness in school during my freshman year. When I begrudgingly began studying Algebra II, fractions with exponents taunted me with their seemingly impossible-to-define domains and ranges, and the irregular curves of quadratic functions twisted like wicked snakes throughout the Euclidean plane. One night, frustrated, I ignored the "No Calculator" instruction at the top of my math worksheet and rebelliously transferred each graph from the calculator screen onto my paper. But it wasn't long before I put the calculator down, detecting certain patterns in each equation and applying what I had learned from the last graph to visualize the next one. By tackling my homework from an artistic standpoint-envisioning where each vertex should peak, how steeply it should slope, and where the curves should cross the x and y-axes-I began to truly understand why each graph behaved as it did. Excited, I suddenly felt something warm and tingly slink across my face. I was smiling-at a math problem.
Over the years, math has gradually become an artistic outlet for me-and my resentment towards the subject has matured into an unexpectedly curious fascination for it. Now, that passion in approaching math problems with a unique perspective has off-sprung into a desire to resolve issues that impact the real world, such as those involved in public health or the recovering economy. I want to put into action the creativity and observational skills that my love for art has imparted to me, not let its flames stop at merely solving high school math problems. I want to effect positive change in the world outside the individual, but I want to do so in a way that fuses together artistic thinking with a practical mind-because imagination is what drives progress. Regardless of whatever realm of everyday life I hope to someday influence, I'll always think back to that sheet of quadratic equations, and remember that sometimes answers need to be discovered from a less-travelled viewpoint. As being a hater-turned-lover of math has taught me, I'll always remember how sometimes the two most seemingly unrelated perspectives could end up complementing and reaching out to each other, like the hands in my painting from so long ago.
"Christine?" I gaze upwards again to find an almost exact real-life replica of my painting before me, suddenly remembering that the lower hand is mine-and that I'm still hanging eighty feet from a very cold, unpleasant-to-fall-on ground. Every inch of my flesh is burning, pricking me with needles of defeat. Sighing, I let my hand firmly grasp that of my rescuer as I watch my painting come to life, feeling my body being lifted onto the standing platform. But for an instant before my feet touch the wooden plank, the shape of my rescuer's bent arm, connected with my outstretched one, makes the outline of a quadratic equation. I wonder what this one's slope is...
Leave it to me to try to derive a math function as I dangle eighty feet above my doom.
Your essay is really well-written! The comparisons you make ...
the irregular curves of quadratic functions twisted like wicked snakes throughout the Euclidean plane
and the way you describe how math came to life for you are fantastic and wonderfully illustrated by your use of adjectives and verbs. I can really feel the passion you have for math, and how you see it applied in the most uncommon ways.
However, I am a little confused by this sentence.
The callous November wind urges me to surrender. Then, just as I extend my right hand up to grab my savior's, an image flashes through my head.
You are discussing how you will not give up, no matter what, then all of a sudden you have decided to surrender? I think there needs to be more of a transition. It can be as simple as "reluctantly, I decide to extend my right hand..." or something like that.
No need for hyphens in this phrase:
eleven years old, that...
...fuses together artistic thinking with a practical--- very interesting idea! I think you do not need "together" though.
I was smiling-at a math problem. ---- hhahhah, I like it!
You did something great with this climbing theme. This essay is a real accomplishment, because it poetically captures an idea that otherwise might not be expressible.
Leave it to me to try to derive a math function as I dangle eighty feet above my doom.---- I was going to say I like the way you ended this, but actually now that I think of it... I want to suggest looking at the essay without this last sentence. Leave it here:
I wonder what this one's slope is... ----- That is a cool ending.
