Here's my common app essay. I guess it fits under either prompt 1: Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you or simply topic of choice. I would love any criticisms and comments. My main worries are:
1.Length. It's almost 1,000 words which I definitely am not a huge fan of. Please point out any things that I can cut out.
2. My ending and the great "impact" paragraphs. Is it clear enough whether I actually show that I've learned something.
3. Do you thing I should give an example of how I use my lesson in everyday life?
Thanks so much. I will definitely read back if you post your link.
The plane's engine drone whispered from the back of the plane as it made its way over the dark crowd of sleeping passengers. It was deep into the night already but my twelve year old self still lay fully awake from the stress of trying to keep my Tourette's Syndrome under control. I had reached a breaking point though. For the past hour I sipped on a cup of water to help relieve my urges to tic, but the cup was empty now and my Tourette's Syndrome was coming back with a vengeance. I hoisted myself over my seat and frantically searched for a flight attendant to ask for a refill but found none. The effects of the absence of water were quickly taking their toll. My hushed screams grew louder each moment.
"Where could these flight attendants be?" I panicked to myself, "Can't they see my service light?" After several fruitless minutes passed, I began to lower myself, accepting the fact that water would never come and that I would soon be public enemy #1, when I felt a light tap on my shoulder.
"This is it, the moment that I hoped would never come," I thought to myself. Growing up with Tourette's Syndrome, I bared with the expected abuse that society threw at me. People often stared at me, yelled at me, and worst of all mocked me. I became familiar with strangers shifting uneasily in their chairs or openly gazing at me whenever I walked by. I also grew used to the occasional heckling, someone yelling at me to shut up or ask in a disgusting way just what the heck I was doing. Though I became accustomed to the derision, impervious to it I was not. There was always that sense of humiliation and shame that flooded me every time someone reacted to my TS. Immediately after I felt that tap on my shoulder, this is what I expected. I could already imagine the disgruntled and drowsy face that would greet me and the angry but sluggish tone of his voice when he asked "Can you stop your screaming please?!"
So imagine my bewilderment when I turned and instead, faced the fair skinned brunette who sat two seats to my left. Instead of a petulant scowl she wore a genuine smile on her middle aged face and in place of a question, she said nothing. Stunned and caught off guard, I could only look at her eyes, which along with her smile seemed to be telling me something.
It didn't come in an AH-HA moment and hit me like a ton of bricks like it so often seems to for Dr. House. Rather, her message slowly grew and filled me with an awkwardly warm and comforting sensation as I unraveled the implications of what she was saying without words.
Her message was simple: "I accept you." By accept she meant that despite the obvious discomfort that my TS caused her she was not going to try and stop me like so many other people had. She realized how my TS was an innate characteristic of me and that I had no control whatsoever over it. She simply let me exist and did not try to challenge me just because I did not fit into the "normal" category. With her, I had absolutely no reason to hide anything. I could live without having to limit or restrict myself and without the fear of her scolding me. To her, I was a perfectly normal individual. With her, I could be me, truly me, something truly rare for me. For the majority of my everyday life I lived under restraints, unable to be the person that I truly was because of societal limits concerning my TS; it was unbearable. However for this brief instance, those chains were let go and it felt amazing. This was the power of acceptance.
The philosophy of acceptance that the lady on the airplane showed me has become the cornerstone of how I interact with people. Acceptance is not trying to mash all the characteristics and personalities in the world into mine, bur rather acknowledging those traits and personalities that differ from mine and not attacking or impugning on them bur letting them exist. I know that there are types of personalities in the world that I will simply never be compatible with. But the moment that I begin to yell at someone for how they act and who they are, I give them the sense that they should not be themselves and, as my Tourette's Syndrome has shown me, there is no worse feeling. I can only hope that by accepting others they will do the same for me. Whenever I do happen to find myself talking with someone whose personality or a trait clashes with mine, I don't show any resentment or bitterness. I act normal, just like the smiling lady did for me.
My philosophy of embracement has spread beyond just personalities to include the acceptance of all ideas and beliefs. Undoubtedly there are concepts that I do not like, from the trivial like strawberries to the significant like the belief that censorship is wrong. However I believe that I have no authority in determining between the right and wrong ideas. Like people's characters, I want all the beliefs and opinions in the world to exist.
I want a world with all the unique characters possible to oppose and clash with each other. I refuse to let myself and others become genetic models filled with characteristics and opinions that society deems as "acceptable," because what can I learn from that? I want to be constantly questioning my beliefs, and it all begins with having things that exist to challenge me. It all starts with accepting.
Though I became accustomed to the derision, impervious to it I was not.
Great sentence
By accept she meant that despite the obvious discomfort that my TS caused her she was not going to try and stop me like so many other people had.-----Reading this, I did not get a sense that she acted uncomfortable. Maybe this sentence is not phrased correctly?
Hey, I am pretty sure that the sipping of water served as your meditation. Check this out:
mindfulnessnyc.org/index_files/DailyPractice.HTML
