Tuesdays with Morrie written by Mitch Albom is one of my favorite books - College of Art and Science

Hey everybody, please help me check out my essay, which is for UVA(I love it to death), and give me some feedback. I would greatly appreciated everyone of u for what u did:)..

Here is the prompt: College of Arts and Sciences - What work of art, music, science, mathematics, or literature has surprised, unsettled, or challenged you, and in what way? (The word limit is 250)

Here is the essay:

Tuesdays with Morrie written by Mitch Albom is one of my favorite books. Whenever I feel lost or hopeless, this book guides me to find my way out and help me find the real meaning of my life and the answers to the problems which I have to face in this real world.

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What you wrote is basically a summary and analysis essay for Tuesdays with Morrie. It does not provide any information about how this piece of literature has left you unsettled, challenged, or surprised. While the analysis that you gave is good, it lacks the direction that the prompt requires. You do not seem challenged, unsettled, or surprised in the essay that you wrote. You accepted everything in the novel as a matter-of-fact. That is not what this piece of writing requires. You need to write about something that you felt helped to change your outlook as a person. This essay is all about trying to define who you have become due to the influence of arts and literature upon your person. Perhaps there is a song, movie, play, or another book, that you can use to describe such an instance in your life instead?

Yeah, I see my problem. And actually, I have revised it and the one I put above is unpolished.

Here is the polished one.

Though fighting with ALS, Professor Morrie Schwartz passed on all his knowledge and wisdom to the public through the book Tuesdays with Morrie compiled and written by his favorite student, Mitch Ablom.

A sociology professor at Brandeis University, Morrie had his own sense of society and culture. As he said, we have long been determined by our society for what we value and how we think.

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Okay, while this version of the essay is better than the first, I am not really sure if a negative representation of your attitude towards life or your disillusionment with it is the way you want the admissions officer to view you. Remember, this paper is a part of your student interview. Normally, students opt to present a more upbeat scenario using this prompt. I can see that you are trying to think outside the box in this instance and you are responding to the unsettling part of the prompt. I am not sure if it will work but if this is the way you want to present yourself, then I guess it is worth a try. Since the essay prompt includes the terms literature and unsettled, this particular version just might work in your favor :-) It is unique and unexpected in more ways than one.

Thanks for your advice. But I think I don't I showed the negative side of myself to the administrator. Actually, there are two transitions in the essay. First one is a bad one, motivated by the blind acceptance of pop culture. The second one, however, the most important one, is a good one, using the wisdom and knowledge I learned from Morrie. In the first transition, I was trapped by illusions made by pop culture and lost my true self. But the second one disillusioned me(let me realized Pop culture is all wrong). By doing that I gradually refind myself and established my own culture( maybe as abstract as it seemed but it's true, What I value and How I think, the person I should be or the person I want to meet)

Guess what, you just presented the essence of your essay in the best possible light :-) Is there any way that you can impart those very same thoughts and sentiments in another version of the essay? I truly believe that this is the message that you need to clearly get across to the reader, without being misconstrued as presenting yourself in a bad or negative light. I am just trying to make sure that your essay will be clearly understood by the reader. There is a slight tendency to misunderstand the way you present yourself in the current version. Just a suggestion for you to consider :-)

Following your advice, I removed some part of the essay and added something upbeat instead.

The first time when I read Tuesdays with Morrie was on a night before my junior's finals. At that time, I was tired of the endless and meaningless school life. I used to be passionate with study in junior middle school when curriculums were interesting, schoolwork reasonable, and schedule flexible. However, everything changed in high school. Because of the heavy schoolwork, I gradually became a study machine. I knew nothing but input, textbooks and exams, and output, scores and grades.

That night, I aimlessly looked through the books on the shelves of the library. Out of nowhere, Mitch's book attracted me. In the book, Mitch Albom tells the story of a real experience between his old professor, Morrie and him. Amazingly, when I read the book, it's like a life-long conversation with Morrie. He shows me how to deal with love, fear, family, emotions, money, culture, the aging and the death. Amongst them, Morris's opinion on culture impresses me most. He tells me not to believe the misleading illusions in our culture but try to create my own subculture.

I was shocked when I realized what he told me is. Everybody, including me, truly has long been affected by our surrounding culture for what we value and how we think: like people without jobs might believe that society has discarded them, while the rest worry about losing theirs.

I realized that it's the education culture that brainwashed me and took all my happiness away. Though can't run out of it, following Morrie's instruction, I started to create my own culture to fight against it. Gradually, I find a balance between study and entertainment, begin read books I liked instead of assigned, and joined club I interested in. It's Morrie who helped me to renew my sense of culture and find my life back.

Grammatical errors aside, I believe that this is the prompt response you should use. It responds in an expanded way to the essay instructions and thus, offers an insight into the kind of point of view about life and culture that you have. That said, I would like you to note the corrections that you need to make within the essay below:


- ... i had lost my passion for study because of the demanding study schedule and inflexible study hours. I was become unhappy and saw myself as an automaton, programmed to simply study and take tests.


- ...the book I felt like I was having a life-long... on culture impressed me the most as he enlightened me about now being misled by the illusions of our culture and traditions.


-... can't run away from it. .. Gradually, I found a balance between my studies and entertainment, began reading books I liked instead of those assigned to me, and I joined a club I was interested in. Morrie helped me renew my sense of culture and get my life back.

I revised your paragraphs to make the essay tighter and more interesting to read. I also did that to correct the grammar problems in relation to tenses.