This is my essay for the common app essay (topic of your choice). I was trying to tell a story that tells things about myself and the way I think. Please critique!
"Thump". I am driving out of the parking lot when I hear a sound. Ignoring it, I drive away. After lunch, I head back to work, and I am shocked. The entrance to the parking lot is littered with atoms, glimmering like jewels in the sunlight. My heart skips a beat and I park the car close by. I run toward the disaster, my lack of dignity unimportant. As I reach the site, my heart sinks. My molecular model kit is destroyed! The set was a recent gift, a memory of the summer spent working with molecules. They must have fallen off of my car after I accidently left them on the roof. I run out into the street and start to pick up the pieces, like so many strewn body parts. I pick them up one by one and examine. A cracked Oxygen, a bent Hydrogen, a flattened double bond, etc. Some are salvageable, but most have been run over repeatedly in the last hour. All of a sudden, I realize that all of the Carbon atoms are missing from the massacre! I remember that I built a Rhodamine B molecule with my set while in my lab cubicle. It was a molecule similar to the one that I had been studying, and it had used every Carbon atom in my kit. Somehow, the molecule must have separated from the kit! I looked throughout the entire parking lot, before going back into the office. I even stayed an hour after work so that I could search the asphalt after the hundreds of cars had left. It seemed so wrong that a molecule was lying somewhere on the Xerox campus and there was nothing I could do about it. If someone found the molecule, they would not know what molecule it was, could not appreciate it. After searching on foot and in the car, I gave up the search. As I drove home, I listened to the hip-hop radio station to get my mind off of the loss. I normally listen to NPR, but the impossibly calm voices would allow my mind to wander too much for a day like today. However, even Kanye West cannot stop me from thinking about the molecule. If someone found that molecule, would they know that Rhodamine B absorbs light in the 600 nm range, or appreciate the complex equilibria that I was worked so hard to learn about? What's more, all of my carbons were gone. The very definition of an organic compound was stripped from my molecule building repertoire. My birthday had just passed, and Christmas was still months away. I could buy a new kit with my own money, earned from working at the ice cream store, but buying a molecule building kit for myself seemed inappropriate, a trivial pursuit. The crushed pieces of atoms and covalent bonds still lie in my bedroom, awaiting a trash can. I wish that I had not left my new molecule set on top of my car. These useless objects, however, are a much better reminder of my summer, and of my love for Chemistry.
Aside from the damage caused and the expense you couldn't afford to incur again, what else did you learn from the experience? That because of your passion for chemistry, you could piece it all together again? You spent too many words listing the damage instead of the outcome, what about chemisty? I don't get any idea of why you love the subject so much. And why Princeton???
