Hi everybody! This is my common app essay that i'm still working on. Please give me any of your comments that you come up with. Harsh comments are more than welcome.
Thank you a lot in advance!
I stepped back, mixed in awe, fear and some incomprehensible excitement. Half of me was yelling out for me to run but the bigger half told me to stay and experience with my six senses the scene I had never seen before. It was twilight, I was in the mountain with my friend on our summer camp trip and we were 1 km away from the camp site. Everywhere was the fierce rustle of trees dazed by gusts of wind. A tremendous fork of lighting struck the sky, and a crash of thunder exploded in an attempt to quiet everything. From the position where we stood, the sky was quaking, but the village far below the mountain was so still and somehow so defenseless.
What made it, I don't know, the viciousness of the incoming storm or the smallness of the human scene, or both, but at that moment, anger, hatred, jealousy, all the things that had been tortured people forever became meaningless. And some of our daily distress, about failure-success, or future-past became so trivial...
...Twilight, the sky was monotonously dark. I lied in bed near the window. My eyes wide opened but they couldn't see anything outside because tears kept spilling out. "Please tell me this is a nightmare! How could this happen to me? ...No, it's over! I have to live my life now! ...But it's just too hard! I was betrayed by my own destiny." My heart suddenly writhed. For the first time, I thought I knew that feeling of "this is the end of everything". Downstairs, my dad's familiar tread brought on a new surge of misery inside of me which burst out as he appeared at the door.
_Daddy...I failed...
_It's alright, alright! I know!
I cried so hard while cuddling up against him. "Please, dad...don't make me go to school tomorrow..."
...Dad looked at my teacher the same way he had looked at the four famous fortune-tellers. And my teacher's response was pretty much the same as what the fortune-tellers had said:
_ Of course she will get the scholarship! I believe in her!
At fifteen, I never contemplated my failure or believed in it. That's why when someone said that I would win a hard competition to be among 20 Vietnamese students who get the full scholarship to study in Singapore Chinese Girl's School, one of top 5 high schools in Singapore, I believed it. Because of my belief, a girl as ambitious as I was could skip many classes at school to spend time on studying only English and Math for the competition that could send her to one of the best education systems in the world. I could lag far behind my class-mates yet never doubted my direction. And even when I came to the leaving examination unprepared, my mind was still on my real competition 4 months later. Life never treated me so bad. My fate was never destined for serious trouble or miserable failure. All I knew was that if I failed, I would not get in a top-ranked high school in Vietnam because of my leaving examination's bad result. And because I would keep skipping classes in my new high school, if I failed, I would have to handle a very heavy workload to catch up with my classmates and also suffer feeling of having a broken dream. For such bad things, fate would not let me fail...
...Still, I went to school the next day. After a month of ignoring the school work, every subject appeared so difficult to me. My eyes were swollen and all I wanted was just to cry out if teachers ever called my name. The first day was not an easy day and many days later were full of discouragement, failures and despair. However, failing the competition turns out to be one of my greatest blesses. The experience helps me notice that no matter what I do, dad always says "I have a feeling that you will win" and mom always says "whatever will be, will be". It shows me my truest friends, who stick with me in my hardest time and who don't mind if sometimes I rather study at home than go out with them. The bad fall let me know that I was stronger than I thought, and its influence may compel me to be a wiser gambler the next time I take risks. I do learn that life is unpredictable and that's why I transferred to a top-ranked school just one year later. Life is also so short that there's no point in wasting my time on trivial things like: worry, hatred or sorrow. And if I ever had such dream of making this world a better place, I should do it now...
_ Tam, what are you doing? It's raining already! Let's run!
_You're right, let's run!
Rain was pouring down so hard while the hiss was getting louder. Rain made everything more obscure but the flashes of lightning shed enough light for us to see our swampy and muddy way. There were puddles and there were stones but we kept running, and I ran fast...
Thank you a lot in advance!
I stepped back, mixed in awe, fear and some incomprehensible excitement. Half of me was yelling out for me to run but the bigger half told me to stay and experience with my six senses the scene I had never seen before. It was twilight, I was in the mountain with my friend on our summer camp trip and we were 1 km away from the camp site. Everywhere was the fierce rustle of trees dazed by gusts of wind. A tremendous fork of lighting struck the sky, and a crash of thunder exploded in an attempt to quiet everything. From the position where we stood, the sky was quaking, but the village far below the mountain was so still and somehow so defenseless.
What made it, I don't know, the viciousness of the incoming storm or the smallness of the human scene, or both, but at that moment, anger, hatred, jealousy, all the things that had been tortured people forever became meaningless. And some of our daily distress, about failure-success, or future-past became so trivial...
...Twilight, the sky was monotonously dark. I lied in bed near the window. My eyes wide opened but they couldn't see anything outside because tears kept spilling out. "Please tell me this is a nightmare! How could this happen to me? ...No, it's over! I have to live my life now! ...But it's just too hard! I was betrayed by my own destiny." My heart suddenly writhed. For the first time, I thought I knew that feeling of "this is the end of everything". Downstairs, my dad's familiar tread brought on a new surge of misery inside of me which burst out as he appeared at the door.
_Daddy...I failed...
_It's alright, alright! I know!
I cried so hard while cuddling up against him. "Please, dad...don't make me go to school tomorrow..."
...Dad looked at my teacher the same way he had looked at the four famous fortune-tellers. And my teacher's response was pretty much the same as what the fortune-tellers had said:
_ Of course she will get the scholarship! I believe in her!
At fifteen, I never contemplated my failure or believed in it. That's why when someone said that I would win a hard competition to be among 20 Vietnamese students who get the full scholarship to study in Singapore Chinese Girl's School, one of top 5 high schools in Singapore, I believed it. Because of my belief, a girl as ambitious as I was could skip many classes at school to spend time on studying only English and Math for the competition that could send her to one of the best education systems in the world. I could lag far behind my class-mates yet never doubted my direction. And even when I came to the leaving examination unprepared, my mind was still on my real competition 4 months later. Life never treated me so bad. My fate was never destined for serious trouble or miserable failure. All I knew was that if I failed, I would not get in a top-ranked high school in Vietnam because of my leaving examination's bad result. And because I would keep skipping classes in my new high school, if I failed, I would have to handle a very heavy workload to catch up with my classmates and also suffer feeling of having a broken dream. For such bad things, fate would not let me fail...
...Still, I went to school the next day. After a month of ignoring the school work, every subject appeared so difficult to me. My eyes were swollen and all I wanted was just to cry out if teachers ever called my name. The first day was not an easy day and many days later were full of discouragement, failures and despair. However, failing the competition turns out to be one of my greatest blesses. The experience helps me notice that no matter what I do, dad always says "I have a feeling that you will win" and mom always says "whatever will be, will be". It shows me my truest friends, who stick with me in my hardest time and who don't mind if sometimes I rather study at home than go out with them. The bad fall let me know that I was stronger than I thought, and its influence may compel me to be a wiser gambler the next time I take risks. I do learn that life is unpredictable and that's why I transferred to a top-ranked school just one year later. Life is also so short that there's no point in wasting my time on trivial things like: worry, hatred or sorrow. And if I ever had such dream of making this world a better place, I should do it now...
_ Tam, what are you doing? It's raining already! Let's run!
_You're right, let's run!
Rain was pouring down so hard while the hiss was getting louder. Rain made everything more obscure but the flashes of lightning shed enough light for us to see our swampy and muddy way. There were puddles and there were stones but we kept running, and I ran fast...
