Hi everyone happy holidays! I finally finished my common app essay and I am hoping for some harsh criticism and some tips. Thank you so much!!!
The Piano
I love to play the piano, even though I'm bad at it.
However, when I was a teenager, the very idea of loving my weakness was very alien to me. I would always refuse to play a game of basketball, scrabble, and even a little sudoku puzzle because I was simply inadequate. This form of philosophy shaped me into a picky sourpuss.
But, one day as I was walking home, a familiar angelic sound grabbed my soul as it lured me home. When I entered my dwelling, I felt the sadness of the music sink into my body and circulate around my veins. The magic of the sound drew my curiosity as I slowly walked toward the living room. Afraid that this was a dream and one wrong step would wake me up, I silently tip toed and peeked in. My sister, dressed in her pajamas, was sitting on a bench shaped seat, leaning over a large wooden shape object, with the word Yamaha. As her fingers came down on the keys on the ivory white, charcoal black decorated keys, the music came out like a morning bird, beautiful and soft. I was awed at the device in front of me as my mouth shaped into a little oval.
As the great majestic wood became larger, my sister and my eyes met and the room was filled with "tick-tocks" from our living room clock. Before I said a word, she huffed a yawn and headed toward her room. "Where did you get this?" I asked, and with a tired voice she responded "mom bought it for me as surprise birthday present", with that I heard the door shut. With nothing else standing between me and the piano, I quickly sat down. With a smile, my finger came down on the middle white bar and the piano sang. Feeling a chill running up my back, I pressed the notes from left the right, making a sound similar to an ascending stairs. Then I tried to imitate the song I heard from my sister. In my head, I heard the song. Each key I hit sounded right, and I felt unstoppable. I ran to my sister and asked her if she liked my song. For a second, she looked at me as if I was a some obnoxious child, but then she told me that it sounded like a dying car. My will to play crumbled like a tower of blocks, and immediately I began to feel the familiar pain of as if someone had just punched me in the stomach.
Next day, I tried to forget the piano by occupying myself with music- it was not a good idea because in minutes I ran to the piano to try and play Yesterday by the Beatles. After an unsuccessful hour, I came back to reality. Staring blankly at the empty music sheet, I knew I could not just jump ten levels ahead of myself, so I started off by learning how to play something very low level, like Twinkle Twinkle little star. But it took me a while because I had to look down at my hands most of the time, and I memorized the fingering of the music so that I didn't have to look at the music sheet. When I succeeded playing the Twinkle star, I tried to play Rivers Flow in You by Yiruma, one of my favorite piano songs, but I only managed to learn the first ten measure of the music.
The piano became something more than an object; it became a friend for me, a friend that sang my emotions and my day. Even though I would stomp away from the piano couple times, I was always right back to the seat the very next moment, trying to figure out the mysterious symbol that lied in front of me. Some people might have called it "wasting your time" but for me, figuring out these complicated notes was really ecstatic because every time I identified a new note, it was only another step closer to solving the whole puzzle.
