I really don't know where I'm going with this.. but... just read and tell me what you think. Or if you have any idea how I should develop this. I want to make connection between my scars and my mistakes and how I've learned to view mistakes as a reminder to become better, not as something that's holding me down. I don't know how to tie that in though.. Any idea?
A girl stands, scars running in colliding train tracks on her body, summoning pain at all angles. Scars of various sizes, diverse shapes, and special hues reminiscing stories embedded deep under the pores. Atopic Syndrome ï an allergic hypersensitivity that affects part of body not directly in contact with the allergen. The allergen incognito sweet-talks me into digging my skin when I'm numb with dreams at night until my skin has been stripped away by my own nails and hands. The frustrated mother will once again scold me for doing so at sunrise and I blame the anonymous villain under my breath.
And does this sound too.. gothic/suicidal? I'm not intending to. ):
what actually is the prompt?
it's just a topic of my choice.
I don't know if this is valid or not, but your essay sounds a lot like a poem full of abstraction, and I think it would confuse the adcoms.
Feel free to correct/[scold at] me. That's just what I think.
Your use of language is very good though. Everything flows smoothly.
Well done.
Well this is just an introduction.. so maybe it won't be as abstract when I'm done? I don't know. ): AHHHH i dont know what to do..
Your essay is very unique in many ways. You stand out and your descriptions are extremely vivid.
Two thumbs up.
revised it a bit.
I looked up how many words this is and its only 488 words.. is it too short??
pcvrz34g, it does not matter how long a prompt is, as long as you get your point across. But for this prompt, it is very good. The first paragraph certainly captured my attention.
also in the second and third paragraph, you start of with the same sentence... you might want to change that.
Thanks. I'll just delete the third paragraph's first sentence. (:
It's a good essay but kind of grotesque for me and maybe the admin officers. It's unique how you compare you're high school journey (or life journey?) to scars, but scars have a somewhat negative connotation. Focus on making this essay more positive. Show have scars have changed you for the better.
The essay is also somewhat abstract. I know this is the topic of your choice, but you should narrow it down a little more.
Overall, good start. Make your essay more positive, so you come across as a more positive person. And cut down on the graphic-ness of the scars, even though they serve as good descriptions.
my concept of life begs to differ the conventional idea that mistakes should be forgotten.
^Since when was forgetting mistakes conventional?
You get hurt and then you heal and then you get hurt in new ways. Your essay doesn't show that you're a good candidate at all. Most people learn from mistakes conciously or unconciously. All of your mistakes are physical ones...what do you expect the college to think? Oh this candidate is less likely to die on campus cause she's had all this experience carved on her skin...
I do not see the connection between learning from your physical faults and your other faults. How would the scars on your body teach you anything other than to not climb the next fence or to not anger your neighbor's dog?
maybe i didn't make myself clear. i have medical problem that makes my skin NOT heal if that makes sense... and i'm not saying my mistakes were physical. i was just trying to make a correlation between mistakes in life and my medical problem. i guess i wasn't clear about it enough. and it's not like i cut myself.. scars dont necessarily mean they were intentional.
and it's not like i cut myself.. scars dont necessarily mean they were intentional.
^I never said that they were...
i have medical problem that makes my skin NOT heal if that makes sense... and i'm not saying my mistakes were physical.
^Yes I understand your medical problem.
i was just trying to make a correlation between mistakes in life and my medical problem. i guess i wasn't clear about it enough.
^No i get it now. In that case you should listen to cybertron.
Sorry for misunderstanding. :]
now i feel like i should rewrite it.. haha.. i dont want the adcoms to react the same way T.T
maybe i just wont write about this at all because it's somewhat risky..
i cant think of a way to make it so that people wont misunderstand D=
anyways, thanks Boxin and cyber. (:
Hmmm. Not necessarily. Maybe you can explicitly state your medical condition and talk about how you turned your medical condition (weakness) into something positive (a strength). It could still be a very strong essay.
On the other hand, if you really don't feel satisfied, there's no harm in writing another one.
Good luck!
very creative! its remarkably original. However, I must ask myself, will colleges judge the fact that the essay itself is quite graphic, even dark in its descriptions?
nonetheless, well done
Okay okay rewrote it. (: let me know how it is. and PLEASE let me know if it's still graphic. I guess I don't realize it as much because I'm used to it...
let me know if anything from the previous essay was better than the current one too. (:
I really like this essay! Blows mine out of the water! The flow is perfect, the grammar is impeccable and the vocab isn't too flashy. Bravo! Top notch Essay! I am gonna have my friend who knows essay read over this for a more thorough proofread. But as far as I can see, it is a very well made essay.
great job, it is a little dark but i think that gives you a writing style
awesomeee
At first the introduction seemed a little confusing to me. But your further wrting sort of explained what you were trying to say however the introduction did capture my attention. I think that you have written a great essay!
Well done
What I enjoyed about this essay is that it was descriptive enough for me to visual it. And also, how you turn what may be a negative aspect of your life to a positive, that it made you a stronger person despite everything else that has happened.
I love your conclusion but I think some of your writing is either too "complicated" or overly dramatic. I think you use too much decorated words or phrases (if that makes sense lol). It is a good read and very interesting. And although it seems all doom-in-gloom and way too gothic-y, at the end is sorta like a sun ray shone through a dark cloud. Just my two cents. :D
yeah, the melancholy atmosphere was what I was trying to avoid.. but it's hard to eschew that if I really want to demonstrate my struggle.. I think my point was to have the ray shine through dark cloud because this really was a hard thing for me to withstand while growing up.
Is it overly dramtic? Can you pinpoint please? I personally don't see it and I certainly don't want to seem exaggerated... D: Let me know what you can find.
My first draft, people criticized it for being too grotesque and I was trying to find less gory words for it... ):
Let me know how I can directly address the problem. (:
Thanks everyone for your comments/suggestions!! <3
PS in a way, i kind of wanted it to be bittersweet. It truly was a bittersweet experience.
maybe i should title it bittersweet scars to explain it before hand..
The part where you explain the meaning behind different scars can use some punctuation and I don't a less dramatic tone to it. Play it down but not too much. Which I am sure you can do excellently. I can relate with your essay. I was bit by a 5-month-old rottweiler in my nose. The scar wasn't that bad but I thought it looked horrible. But one day I decided to embrace it and realized that the scar just told an interesting fact about me and it was part of my life. So trust me, I feel your essay. I love the title, it reminds me of one of my all time favorite song, bittersweet symphony.
YAY thanks for giving me advice. If you don't mind, can you quote the exact place? I'm not completely sure where you're referring to... Sorry! ><
Good essay so far. You might want to tie what you have learned from your experience into what you plan to contribute to the university a bit more explicitly at the end, though.
I love your descriptive words.They are lovely.
This essay is pretty intriguing. I guess I just have some food for thought. Your focus is on the scars themselves which are the physical evidence of your mistakes (or at least symbolically). Maybe you should say your focus is on the scars because they are evidence of your bodies own healing mechanisms. That's more of a positive focus. Focus on the healing and the moving forward. You also make the connection between your mistakes and the scars but don't make a connection between the learning/inspiration from your mistake to a symbol like the scars. I might do that for a more organized flow of ideas. Hope it helps!
I've revised the last paragraph. let me know if you like it more/less. I used diiia's suggestions. As for EF_Sean, I'm writing this essay for a scholarship. But later, when I use this for college apps, I'll be sure to add your suggestions (:
A girl stands, scars running in colliding train tracks on her body, reminiscing pain at all angles. Scars of various sizes, diverse shapes, and special hues musing over stories embedded deep under the pores. I was born with Atopic Syndrome, an allergic hypersensitivity that affects part of body not directly in contact with the allergen, but the syndrome itself isn't the only problem; I'm enveloped by layers of skin too stubborn to fully heal itself, jeering at doctors who too question my anomalous skin condition. When I'm numb with dreams at night, the allergen incognito coaxes me into blemishing my skin until my skin has been peeled away by my own nails and hands. The frustrated mother will once again scold me for doing so at sunrise and I will once again blame the anonymous villain under my breath.
"You're going to loose your fiancé when your in-laws discover your scars," my mother would tease. In all seriousness, however, her joke is the blunt reality. Scars carry negative reputations and often fool strangers to envisage negative situations. But despite others' opinions, to me personally, every cut in my life has left me scarred but scarred for good. My skin's memory capacity surpasses that of my brain. My browned knee narrates the first failure I encountered only one year into the world as I attempted to stumble across the room on my unripe femur. My slightly dented nose at close inspection anecdotes the first dark-tag I played, in which I exploded my nose blood vessel upon crashing into a wooden podium even before I turned five. All memories that would have flew past my eyes if they hadn't offered a souvenir on my skin.
I've made many mistakes within the first eighteen years of my life. Mistakes of various sizes, diverse shapes, and special hues. Perhaps my ideal is different because of the burden of scars that I've dragged around on my chain all my life, but I've naturally grown accustom to the unyielding nature within me that has develop my concept of life that begs to differ the conventional idea that mistakes and regrets should be forgotten. Upon confronting a problematic scenario, a friend would say, "It's O.K. Just forget about it and move on," when nothing in life can possibly be moved on. While we blindly try so hard to obliterate the dark times of our lives, we fail to realize that both the ups and downs make us who we are individually. Erasing any of it is to erase a chance to recover from the mistake and avoid it the next time around. It doesn't matter if my mother chugs ointment down the ripped crease of my skin or if I quietly lullaby myself to sleep because the cut will join the myriad of scars and the problem, stacks of unwanted history. At the end of the day, it will remain right where it was initially, smiling at me. James Joyce once said "A man's errors are his portals of discovery." My scars have been my portals of discovery and my personalized healing mechanism. I appreciate every scar on my body and every fall in my journey of life as an inspiration to become someone better. They have never shackled me down but rather ascended me to never carve the same scar again and to never stumble on the same road again. To study history is to learn to never repeat the same mistakes again. Certainly, I get a paper cut once in a while and clumsily gash myself against the chair leg every now and then, but they are new openings to develop me into someone stronger, scarred for the better.
Sorry,I totally don't understand it...
Maybe my English is too poor...
Its difficult to read the first time around, make some changes.
"You're going to loo se your fiancé..."
Watch out for the different ways to use loose and lose.
Wow, kritipg. Thank you SO much for fixing that. I almost missed that...
I don't think I'll be using this essay for college application anymore.. Well, maybe. I'm still contemplating because I really think this is a "love-or-hate" essay. :\ It can go REALLY wrong or REALLY well.
Thanks to EVERYONE who commented!
