Can someone look over and see if I had shown my PERSPECTIVE? I feel like I'm lacking depth in the essay, but I don't know where I should add it.
Using a favorite quotation from an essay or book you have read in the last three years as a starting point, tell us about an event or experience that helped you define one of your values or changed how you approach the world. Please write the quotation, title, and author at the beginning of your essay.
"Don't ever give up.
Don't ever give in.
Don't ever stop trying.
Don't ever sell out.
And if you find yourself succumbing to one of the above for a brief moment,
pick yourself up, brush yourself off, whisper a prayer, and start where you left off.
But never, ever, ever give up."
â- Richelle E. Goodrich, Eena, The Two Sisters
A. The quality of Rice's academic life and the Residential College System are heavily influenced by the unique life experiences and cultural traditions each student brings. What perspective do you feel that you will contribute to life at Rice? (Most applicants are able to respond successfully in two to three double-spaced pages.)
Madeline bent over the sheet of white paper, earnestly practicing her Chinese characters. As her Chinese tutor, I had gone over the characters with her, marking down the order of pen strokes and writing each character's meaning. With this treasure trove of knowledge in her hands, she started replicating the characters, albeit rather slowly and ungracefully. The image of Madeline's determination suddenly reminded me of myself in middle school, learning Chinese.
I grew up in the city-state of Singapore, a junction of different ethnic groups and backgrounds. Even though I was immersed in so many cultures, I felt blank. The people around me were Malaysian, New Zealander, Australian, and Indian, just to name a few. What was I? Studying in an Australian international school, I was Chinese ethnically, but I did not speak the language, nor did I know anything about Chinese history and culture. Ironically, I understood more about Australia than I did China, so in order to combat my lack of knowledge, I moved to China when I graduated primary school.
The three years in China were the most unbearably demanding years of my life. Prepared with only basic conversational skills, and with no ability to read or write Chinese, the teachers did not want to enroll me, afraid that I would lower the class mean scores. Only after discussion did the teachers allow me to take place in the class, provided my scores were not counted.
Education in China is strenuous, even for native Chinese. Tests every month, essays every week, quizzes every day, not forgetting that classes start at 7am and end at 10 pm, I really signed up for a ride. However hard it was, I trudged along. On my first exam, I understood roughly two percent of the entire test, but thank goodness for multiple choice: I failed the test, 24 out of 100. You'd think that broke my spirit or something. Actually no, I was pretty happy I did not place last, as the class clown decided to conveniently not write his name down, scoring a zero.
Once you hit rock bottom, things can only get better from there. It was the determination not to fail that compelled me to succeed. For the next three years, I completely devoted myself to mastering Chinese. In order to prepare for a daily quiz, I started studying hours before it, memorizing characters, the order of the characters in the sentence, the punctuation, and practicing it countless times in a notebook. While other students only needed to review a few hours before a test, I was breaking my back weeks before it, struggling to retain pages of unfamiliar passages on Politics, Biology, and Classical Chinese into my brain. Many times I desired to quit, to go back home to my parents in Singapore, to escape the mental and physical strain. Then I remembered my resolve: not to fail, and somehow I could carry on. My friends and teachers were always supportive of me, so to thank them back I volunteered to tutor English every day during break time.
Hard work brings profit. By the second year of middle school I had placed first in my class of ninety students, and in my final year I was awarded "Three Best Students", an award given only to two students per class. However, the biggest reward of my determination is a new world-window that has opened. Not only did I learn my language and culture of China, I also brought my culture to those around me. Most importantly, I've discovered that I am not just a blank girl endeavoring to unearth her identity, but a girl whose identity is her endeavor. Life is the product of many different choices. In the face of difficulty, I chose to persevere, and that has made all the difference.
Now I am sitting in America, at a new school, teaching someone else the language I once struggled with. Madeline put down her pen; she had finished copying the characters. I handed the new sheet of characters for her to practice, and knew that if she did not give up, success was hers.
Thanks in advance! Any help is appreciated!
This is a nice essay! You might want to check for run-on sentences though, like this one:
Prepared with only basic conversational skills, and with no ability to read or write Chinese, the teachers did not want to enroll me, afraid that I would lower the class mean scores.
Also, use the semi-colon instead of the colon.
On my first exam, I understood roughly two percent of the entire test, but thank goodness for multiple choice; I failed the test, 24 out of 100. Keep the formality, don't use "you" and "or something".
