This is my essay for Common App prompt #4, any critique and opinions are greatly appreciated!
Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you? (250-650 words)
The sky was clear; chilly air entered from a small hole on the nose of my glider, Schweizer SGS 2-33. My sweat-coated palms gripped the stick, controlling the glider as a PZL-Wilga towed me by the steel cable. I tried like hell to avoid the prop wash that was threatening the air flow surrounding my aircraft. I shifted my gaze to the instrument panels, simple analog dials ticking. I glanced at the altimeter.
1,200... 1,300...1,400.
When the needle hit 1500, I placed my free hand on the release knob and looked back up at the towing plane. It rocked its wings left and right.
"Sierra Delta Golf Delta Foxtrot is releasing at one five zero zero feet."
My hand instinctively pulled the knob. 'Click.'
Now, I was on my own.
My flight instructor's words still linger within my head:
"The more you sweat in times of peace, the less you bleed in war."
All the theory I learned in countless hours poring over training manuals and rehearsing via screens on flight simulators - realizing full preparedness as I bring all my training to bear in one moment - provides an overwhelming sense of contentment every time I take to the skies.
Contentment comes with accepting the daunting challenge of learning to fly. It was scary the first time I peered into a cockpit and saw all the buttons, heard the bewildering jargon and chatter squawking over the radio.
Sometimes it's nice to be alone in the sky. Soaring high above the ground gives me a sense of communion with God and His creation, but often I like to share the heavens with others. I remember one time I brought a good friend of mine; he had been on a 747 before - but not a steel frame fuselage covered in aircraft fabric. I let him sit on the front seat while I took position on the back seat - where instructors usually do. We dragged the plane from the open hangar to a green runway that had traces of wheel skids left on the grassy surface. Then a plane towed us up to the sky and release. From 3,000 ft above the ground. Separated just by a sheet of Plexiglas, we could clearly see the alignment of concrete buildings below, all grey and orange with a hint of green as an indication of a small park within the densely populated town.
When I fly I have feeling that that is the place I am meant to be. In the center of my life brings me total peace. Nowhere else gives me quite a similar sense of certainty of purpose. I got a piece of that where I'd do a lot of planning, take off, punch into clouds, talk to the air traffic control, enjoying the scenery as if it was some sort of Nirvana to me. I looked out from my cockpit, gazing at the sun rising over a limitless horizon that mesmerizes my mind - representing my future.
Hardinel, this is one of the best essays pertaining to this prompt that I have read. It is excellent in the sense that you have a clear grasp of the prompt requirements and deliver more than it requires. It is not only imaginative by nature, but it also offers us a glimpse into you character and the kind of world that you belong to where this unique sense of contentment exists. That said, I have just one simple critique of your essay. In the portion where you said you flew with a friend, I did not see any sense of bonding or contentment existing on either of your parts. It would help that paragraph if you could insert something about how your friend also contentment in the skies with you, you created a stronger bond with that friend, or anything that will prove that this kind of world, when shared with other people, brings about a greater sense of contentment for you and contentment on the part of your friend. The addition of such a statement will surely heighten the understanding and highlight the sense of contentment that comes with flying.
