Tea with Pancakes - Story that changed my life

Tea with Pancakes

One frizzing winter day, as I was falling for the hundredth time on the ice that covered the road, I was just at the point of abandoning the idea of being on the "Who? Where? When?" team. Russian winters are normally harsh so you'd say Russian hearts should have frozen long ago and have made people indifferent to the icy winds that own streets in Moscow every winter morning. However, that definitely wasn't my case. Anyway, reaching the stairs of our local little library felt like a little disappointment: all these trouble for an event of no importance to me. I was no team player so when my teacher asked me to join an intellectual decathlon team my answer would have been "no" if only it wasn't my first year of high school - time to socialize they say. So I gave it a try.

[...]

Alina, this is a tremendously long story. You will need to edit it to a more readable length by deleting, combining, and editing certain parts. We can help you do that after you have told us what the actual essay prompt is so that we will know how to slant or direct the feel of the paper. The story you are trying to tell is something that is unique and important. But that is lost because all the reader sees is an extremely long story that he or she may not want to even start reading. Remember, an admissions officer first glances at your essay and checks the length. Anything too long gets set aside for another day of reading. Which is bad news for your application. You need to get the admissions officer to connect with your story from the very beginning. That is not happening in this version. We can help you make that connection once you provide us with the prompt.

There are also a few grammatical errors and sentence structure issues that we need to address in the paper. Don't worry, it did not reduce the effect of the story you are trying to tell. Although, it is important that you come across as a person who can express yourself properly in English. Your paper is excellent. It just needs a few adjustments to become perfect, and that is what we will help you try to achieve :-)

In any case ,not needed I was to be on
fencing, or reading fiction books.
a show-off activity
I guess the responsibility does something to me - not a good sentence. Maybe: I guess the responsibility has a great influence on my behavior,

to do work; I end up doing the whole team's work and hating
It had happened before and that was the main

I will continue editing since I must go now :D

Thank you very much for you feedback!! There are two promts for the essay above: (1). Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. (2). Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?The limit is 650 words so I clearly would need to edit the essay but I am not sure where to start. I am an international student from Russia and my English is probably hard to read so sorry about that. I really try my best and appriciate all your corrections!

Firstly, I would correct the tiny grammatical mistakes. Then we could think which parts to ommit.
everything went in an unexpected way
about curious finding
I set up the time and texted all of them back.
if we were going to hang out and have fun this weekends , and I would tellinform(maybe) them
twenty days we became intellectually very effective and productive
PlusMoreover, we learned to teach others working style and life positions (it is not smooth) maybe: different working styles. (life positions is so coarse for this essay)

werewas doing great, while going step in step with anotherthe other team.
to watch and be powerless to help - to watch, powerless to help
My heart almost stopsed
that'swas where I had led them.
Your trust today meant the world to me

I finished the reading; and, I really admire the story. It was beautiful, encouraging, and it felt so real I could imagine everything happening. Maybe you could consider the errors I found, see if I am not mistaken. Then, after revising whatever you think needs to be revised, we can work on the length of the writing.

I hope it to be useful.

sa1na, many many thanks. I'll revise the essay shortly and change all the parts you marked out. Your corrections are reeeaaly helpful.

Alina, the essay is too long because you discussed it in chronological order. You should have simply jumped to the very important part, the climax of the essay which is what happened during the competition itself and your reaction to it. Then how you overcame the grief stemming from the event. Let me list it down for you so that you will know how to discuss it:

1. Introduce what ID is and what the competition is about.
2. Jump directly to the competition, to the part where you failed. Set up the basis for the failure, then present the failure.
3. Discuss how you felt, how the team felt.
4. Discuss the aftermath and how you dealt with it.
5. Conclude the essay.

I hope this advice helps you. I look forward to reading the revised version :-)

This didn't seem to come out so good.. I am not sure if it is even interesting anymore.. On the bright side it is 650 words now

Tea with Pancakes

The day of the first winter game when we were rushing through the snowy streets together, being a little too frozen to walk slowly and too excited to care about keeping the air of dignity, I felt as if I grew wings. The excitement over the Intellectual Decathlon (ID) competition towards which all our efforts and thoughts were directed for the last two weeks was palpable in the ticklish winter air.

[...]

Alina, here is a tip for essay writing, when you think the essay is becoming too difficult to write or you think it is not working for you, the best thing to do is throw the essay you are working on away. Throw it away and start on a new one. This time, write it from a different standpoint or change the subject of the essay. When an essay is misbehaving for you, most likely it is because you are either afraid of how you are writing it, or you are not sure of the topic, or worse, you are not really inspired by the essay you are writing. Anything that is difficult to write should never be the essay that you submit for consideration. So, here is the question I need to ask you, "Do you think this essay will catch the attention of the admissions officer? Does it does it do justice to the story you are trying to tell?" If your answer to one or both questions is no, then it is time to write a new essay. I'll hang back on commenting about this essay until you figure out if you really want to use this paper or not. It is no use editing it if you can't get it to work or you are not satisfied with it. Let me know your final decision about this essay and I will proceed accordingly :-)

I believe I would keep to editing this essay because the deadline is so close and it is no right time to switch directions so entirely. I wanted to focus not on the failure though. Rather on learning to work on a team despite being a solo player at first. So maybe I should minimize the part that happens during the game down to just the failure and delete completely the Dostoyevsky reference..

This one is 612 words.

Tea with Pancakes.

Reaching the stairs of our local little library felt like [...]

Alina, more notes for you to consider :-)


- On the second day... I becamethe coordinator...


- ... topicdrawn was...
- Drown is to asphyxiate in water. Drawn is to pull out something.


-... suggestedI go .


- ... wehad done ...


- Then I realized that I had not reviewed the topic during our research and practice runs, so I suggested that we send the person whom I thought would be able to win us the competition.


- ... melosing the game...


- Those words never rang true for my until that day.

Thanks as always, Vangiespen! Some of the mistakes I made are so basic... However, I have some questions to your comments which I maked down in the essay below. And by the way, I am struggling to find a good title for it which is always a great problem with all my writing. Do you have any suggestons?

[Title]

Reaching the stairs of our local little library felt like a condemnation. Inside my new Intellectual Decathlon team was gathering. I didn't like being on teams, sincerely supposing that people use them just as a way to put some of their responsibility for the result of their work on others. It seemed like cheating of a kind. Same I supposed true about the ID players.

Our goal was to prepare for a winter series of interschool battles. Day after day, we met up in the unheated stomach of concrete library building and like tiny bacterias ate up the knowledge that was collected there. It happened on the second day that we forgot to fix the new meeting time and for some inexplicable reason my teammates one after another texted me asking about it. I set up the time and texted all of them back. From then on I became a coordinator of our little group. They asked what to bring to the next preparation session, what research to do at home, if we were going to hang out this weekends and I communicate the information to them.

When the day of the game came, the "Newton's pants" (that's how we called ourselves) was doing great going step in step with the other team. The one question-one person round was the only way we could win the game. The topic drawn was Biology. The "Newton's Pants" suggested I go. After all we had done together I wanted to take this question upon myself and prove us worthy of the first place. However, realizing it wasn't the sphere that I studied in for all twenty days, with some effort I suggested the person who was our bio specialist to go instead. -(the thing is I want to tell that it wasn't me throwing responsibility of my shoulders. We all chose a sphere to master in to be more effective during our preparation. Mine was history, phylosophy and math. Hers was bio. So it was logical for her to answer.) The pattern was simple: She gets it correct - we win...The time is up, she gives a response. No, incorrect. I loose. It was ME loosing, because it was me not planning our time well, it was me not being able to get the work done. This was the cost of the responsibility I took, just as I had predicted from the beginning.

A little note that I retrieved later in that evening out of a pocket of my coat absolutely changed my perspective. It was from the teammate who got to answer the last question: "Thanks. Your trust today meant the world to me. Despite me losing the game for us today, you must know you won." We both were so wrong. We both felt same thing: that it was our personal fault. Ironically, it wasn't. We all shared it as much as we shared the sense of happiness of preparing together. Dostoyevsky once wrote: "The failure makes everything meaningless." Never since did I hold it true for myself. - (On the contrary, that day was the time I stopped seeing truth in them. They seem wrong to me now) The failure made everything in my life more meaningful than ever. The ID team enriched my life not only through introducing me to other academic perspective but helped me grow emotionally. I was able to leave behind what I now recognize as fear of getting all the blame for failure and just a share of victory.