Edits/suggestions for both would be much appreciated!
UVA supplement: "Describe your favorite place to get lost." 250 limit - this is 297 (how much over should I be okay with submitting?)
Sitting alone at a dark stoplight following rehearsal, I begin to tap my foot to the pulsing beats. Soon, my head follows, bobbing left and right, and before I can think to stop myself, I'm belting the lyrics to a World Gym sign. "WHAT IS LOVE?" I ask it, in what could only loosely be called singing. "BABY, DON'T HURT ME." The light turns green. I briefly consider halting my jam session but decide against it, continuing unashamedly. Here, with no one but strangers as my witness, there's no pressure to be the person I strive to be, no need to live up to expectations. I can do whatever I please, a rare and welcome simplicity. The moment is electric, humming with possibility, and I'm blissfully lost in it.
It was a long and stressful journey, arriving at this point. I endured the dull Driver's Ed class with its painfully cheesy 80's videos, tolerated the incompetent instructor and his omnipresent Doritoes, withstood my paranoid mother and her white-knuckled fingers all in hopes that it would be worth it. And it was. For on that victorious day when I passed my driver's test, I first experienced the sweetness of possibility. Granted, I was only driving to the library, but it was the taste of the freedom, the potential of the moment, that became so remarkably addictive. I could listen to rap without my mother's glares. Argue with myself and not worry about being right or wrong. Sing without worrying about pitch. In my little white sedan, I found an escape from the pressures to do things a certain way, and found the joy in doing them my way. Whether ingenious or ridiculous, the ideas were dizzyingly infinite, and I had only just started on the road to discovery.
Common App Activities Statement
I grew up in a horse family, but I was never a horse person. But when I joined the summer program at Progressive Equestrian Therapeutic Services (PETS), I became one. Every week the summer after my junior year, I made the long voyage to the PETS facility, where I volunteered with other "horse people" to help give riding lessons to children with physical and mental disabilities. Terms like" two-point" and "snaffle bit" so casually thrown around my house gained meaning as I learned the basics of riding along with the students. My mother's weekend exhaustion made sense as I too spent hours cleaning stalls in the summer heat, discovering it was possible to sweat from one's eyelids. But most importantly, I learned to understand what my mother and sister always found in riding as I saw the joy radiating from the students' glowing faces. At PETS, they thrived, escaping the challenges of their disabilities as they progressed in a new arena, and I was ecstatic to be a part of their journeys.
UVA supplement: "Describe your favorite place to get lost." 250 limit - this is 297 (how much over should I be okay with submitting?)
Sitting alone at a dark stoplight following rehearsal, I begin to tap my foot to the pulsing beats. Soon, my head follows, bobbing left and right, and before I can think to stop myself, I'm belting the lyrics to a World Gym sign. "WHAT IS LOVE?" I ask it, in what could only loosely be called singing. "BABY, DON'T HURT ME." The light turns green. I briefly consider halting my jam session but decide against it, continuing unashamedly. Here, with no one but strangers as my witness, there's no pressure to be the person I strive to be, no need to live up to expectations. I can do whatever I please, a rare and welcome simplicity. The moment is electric, humming with possibility, and I'm blissfully lost in it.
It was a long and stressful journey, arriving at this point. I endured the dull Driver's Ed class with its painfully cheesy 80's videos, tolerated the incompetent instructor and his omnipresent Doritoes, withstood my paranoid mother and her white-knuckled fingers all in hopes that it would be worth it. And it was. For on that victorious day when I passed my driver's test, I first experienced the sweetness of possibility. Granted, I was only driving to the library, but it was the taste of the freedom, the potential of the moment, that became so remarkably addictive. I could listen to rap without my mother's glares. Argue with myself and not worry about being right or wrong. Sing without worrying about pitch. In my little white sedan, I found an escape from the pressures to do things a certain way, and found the joy in doing them my way. Whether ingenious or ridiculous, the ideas were dizzyingly infinite, and I had only just started on the road to discovery.
Common App Activities Statement
I grew up in a horse family, but I was never a horse person. But when I joined the summer program at Progressive Equestrian Therapeutic Services (PETS), I became one. Every week the summer after my junior year, I made the long voyage to the PETS facility, where I volunteered with other "horse people" to help give riding lessons to children with physical and mental disabilities. Terms like" two-point" and "snaffle bit" so casually thrown around my house gained meaning as I learned the basics of riding along with the students. My mother's weekend exhaustion made sense as I too spent hours cleaning stalls in the summer heat, discovering it was possible to sweat from one's eyelids. But most importantly, I learned to understand what my mother and sister always found in riding as I saw the joy radiating from the students' glowing faces. At PETS, they thrived, escaping the challenges of their disabilities as they progressed in a new arena, and I was ecstatic to be a part of their journeys.
