William and Mary optional essay
Prompt: Beyond your impressive academic credentials and extra curricular accomplishments, what else makes you unique and colorful? We know nobody fits neatly into 500 words or less, but you can provide us with some suggestion of the type of person you are. Anything goes! Inspire us, impress us, or just make us laugh. Think of this optional opportunity as show and tell by proxy and with an attitude.
**For this essay we're basically allowed to do anything, even send something to the school. I'm attaching a youtube link to my concert at the end**
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I am not sure if "preadult mid-life crises" exist, but if they do, I think I have already had mine. Well. I am being quite dramatic. But in the midst of one's junior year in high school, the possibility and probability of various crises lurk in every dark corner. This past spring, I stumbled into one of those corners.
The theatre department had, once again, decided against utilizing my "brilliant" acting skills in the spring play and I found myself uncommitted to a sport or co-curricular project, a required trimester activity for each student at my school. The more desirable activity options were quickly dwindling and my lungs (and psyche) had not yet recovered from last spring's track season. I simply wanted to do something that would make me happy, but I could not decipher what I needed.
Then one day, my best friend asked me, "What have you always dreamed of doing? What are you passionate about?"
Finally, it hit me: I have harbored an overwhelming passion for music for as long as my ears could make sense of sound. When I listen to music, I imagine re-creating songs using various instruments, dancers, and singers. I have always dreamed of producing and directing my own concert and acting as the impresario.
Initially, I had no idea how I would even begin to manifest my complex fantasies, but with the help of my friend acting as my second-in-command, and the forty Hotchkiss students that I eventually recruited, I taught myself.
I started by selecting a sundry group of songs that I wanted to perform. I extrapolated each song, discerning which tools the artists had used to create the song, while also adding additional instruments and components in order to put my own spin on the cover version.
I held auditions and casted musicians, dancers, and drill team members. I directed rehearsals, and even scored some aspects of each song, by utilizing my upbringing as a classical musician. I worked with groups and individuals, fostering a collaborative and creative environment. I taught myself how to be polite but stern with my peers when they missed rehearsal and how to fully appreciate their awe-inspiring talents. In the end, we successfully performed six songs for the majority of faculty and students at my school, and I admittedly burst into tears after the show was complete. While the praise I received for the show pleased me greatly, the satisfaction of achieving a personal dream, a dream I had once believed unachievable, and successfully teaching myself how to be a producer and director, pleased me enough.
I consider this project my greatest and proudest accomplishment. I am brimming with excitement to arrange another concert this school year.
If another mid-adolescence crisis results in anything similar to the culmination of my concert...bring it on.
Okay, as an introduction to your video attachment, I believe that the essay works very well. It has an interesting premise that makes the reader wonder about whether a pre-mid life crisis can actually exist. I found myself actually wanting to see the final outcome of all your hard work via the culmination of the concert. Your depiction of how you had tried to find activities at school to participate in, and feeling like you were left without options already shows a keen interest in the arts. However, I find myself wanting to know, what is the purpose for all of this? Where did you mount the concert? How was it received by the school authorities when you were planning it? What was the end result of the concert for you personally? Did this help to strengthen your desire to pursue your major? These are questions that I feel you need to answer in a simple manner within the essay, leaving the more serious messages as self-explanatory within the viewing of the video.
