Common app essay- influential person
What have I gotten myself into? I watched my new student and sighed hopelessly. He looked like an ordinary child. It was abundantly clear that he loved his mother. Unfortunately, although he adored his mother, he did not seem to adore me. "Matthew, press a key." He sat in front of the piano pretending not to hear me.
After our first meeting, his mother and I discussed future lessons. "Matthew is not a simple child," she hesitated, "Matthew is autistic. His condition keeps him from doing many things he wishes he could do... so please, don't give up on him." From the look in her eyes to her arms subtly stretched out to me, I could see her despair. My eyes widened. I didn't expect her to ask me of this. I wasn't sure whether or not I could handle this. Would I be able to reach him?
The following lessons were slow. Matthew, in his own world, refused to touch the piano. Questions raced in my mind: what if he never tries? What if this is futile?
One day, I couldn't take it any longer. I took his hands into mine.
He looked at me as if I appeared out of thin air, then his eyes focused on our entangled hands. I placed his hands on the keyboard.
"Try," I encouraged him, "just one note".
Silence.
In all my life, I have never experienced such an anticlimactic moment. His hands rushed back to his side and he sat there as if nothing happened. I stared at him, dumbstruck. Then, in disbelief, I laughed. He turned towards me and like any other child, he smiled.
Matthew's first notes came a few weeks later. It wasn't anything dramatic: one morning, he simply decided to stroll in and start pressing keys. It was just another day for Matthew, but for me, it was groundbreaking.
I didn't think that I could reach him. In all the weeks leading up that one monumental lesson, I had no idea that something was sinking in. I was afraid of teaching Matthew, dreading every lesson because I didn't want reality to confront me. I didn't want to believe that failure was possible. But what about Matthew? I had been so bent on my own misgivings that I had not been focusing on Matthew's. Had he felt that dread? Would he have played sooner if I believed in him?
While contemplating, an excerpt of John Donne's poem "For Whom the Bell Tolls" came to mind:
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every
man is a piece of the continent..."
I realized that despite everything, we're connected. Though Matthew seems detached, he's nonetheless a part of humanity and thus, a part of me. All of my actions affected him in some way. I finally took the time to see the world from Matthew's eyes and my perspective broadened. Past the superficialities, we're all one body. I am linked to Matthew. And he is linked to me.
I'm stuck :/ can someone help me try to improve this?
It was amazing, I loved it!
The only thing that seemed... Off, was the ending. It was a good story, then you suddenly started talking about being linked. "Past the superficialities, we're all one body." That's where it went wrong. Try saying "Past the superficialities, Matthew was just a normal little boy." Or something along those lines. If you want to continue the story, try telling the reader how Matthew did over future lessons. If he opened up to the teacher or how he shut down again.
