I have realized the importance of communication. Stanford Essay - Intellectual Vitality

Stanford Essay - Intellectual Vitality

Here's my essay, I'm hoping to get second opinion and ways to improve it
Thanks a lot!

No one spoke to him, and everyone laughed at him. He had no friends. The moment I entered the orphanage, my goal became to focus on Hasan and befriend him. Talking to him in my broken Arabic didn't seem to pay off, it didn't seem enough. felt that Hasan needed reciprocity in order to open up to me. I told him everything about myself, including my list of crushes. Gradually, we became really close and by the end of my service at the orphanage, it was extremely difficult for us to say goodbye to each other.

My father's depression started about a month ago; he would hardly talk or eat. Everyday after school, I would sit next to him, entertain him with gossip from school, only to make him smile. Sitting with him everyday paid off when one day my father opened up to me. He poured out his problems and I listened.

Be it at home with my father, or at the orphanage with Hasan, I have realized the importance of communication. Communication doesn't always have to be two sided, just sitting and listening to someones problems, being there for them is as important as talking to them. I feel that effective communication by itself has the scope of solving major world problems such as racism and poverty. My craving for making a difference makes this quality very important to me, and the above experiences have given me a greater insight on how to achieve that.

Mohib, you certainly came up with a very unique essay about your interest in communication and what you life experiences have taught you about its importance. This is the kind of essay that accurately showcases your intellectual vitality and your ability to connect two seemingly random activities in your life that, at first glance, does not really seem to have any connection with one another. I mean, volunteering at an orphanage and then talking about your father's depression? Definitely no way those two ends should meet right? Yet you managed to do exactly that in what seems to be an almost effortless manner :-)

Excellent work! Just a word of advice though, if your word count will still allow it, could you describe how you got Hasan to open up to you? Also, let us know if these two people were somehow influenced by your gift of communication. Did they become more open to talking to other people and sharing information about themselves? I think it would be good to add something like that to the essay since you are trying to point out that communication works in various ways. So if you can show how these two people learned to communicate in their own unique way with those around them, it will further help to drive your point home :-)

Thanks a lot for your reply! The problem with these Stanford essays is they only allow 250 words as their limit, and I'm lying on the brink at 247. If there is anything you feel that is unneeded, and should be removed, could you tell me?

Mohib, I believe that between the two scenarios you presented, the one that you should develop more would be the story about the orphanage because it offers more opportunities for you to show how communication works among people of different ages, languages, interests, and backgrounds. If you develop the story further, you can make that effect quite clear and impressive in the response.

While the story of your father is interesting, it is all about communication on a personal level. As such, it does not require you to exert too much effort when it comes to making yourself understood. In as much as your father was emotionally closed off from you at first, it is a given that he would have eventually opened up to you because of your blood relation. That is something that does not exist in the orphanage so getting the child to open up to you in that scenario is definitely far more impressive and truly showcases the vitality of your intellect.

So, my advice is, develop the orphanage communication story and totally delete the part about your father so that you will have the additional word count with which to properly develop the orphanage communication story.