Hi guys! This is what I plan to send to Tulane for the essay portion of the application. Please critique and tell me what I can do better or what you think of the topic.
Personal Statement: Please write between 250 and 500 words to describe a special interest, significant experience or achievement, or anything else that has special meaning to you or had a significant influence on you.
"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" is the most meaningful book I've ever owned and the very basis for the way I try to face the world. When I was ten, my mother gave me her copy of the book after I asked her whether or not there was a Santa Claus. In reading the opening about the little girl, Virginia O'Hanlon, I found we were very much alike. We both wanted to believe, when all around us people doubted. As I went through the rest, I found a special meaning that I can carry with me not only at Christmas time, but year round.
The short article inside the book has given me the knowledge that seeing is not always believing. It doesn't matter if you have never seen something; that doesn't mean it isn't real. We can't see bacteria, but it's certainly there isn't it? The very forces that are real and shape this planet are the ones you can't see, or are they not real either? Are you supposed to stop believing because your eyes tell you so?
This story of Santa Claus has also given me hope and a knowledge that I can do and accomplish all that I want to, that anything is possible. That all ambition will blossom into something amazing not only through hard work and a quick wit, but if you truly want it and believe in it enough to make it happen. It's a combination of things that brings an idea to life, to travel across continents. Very much like the legend of Santa Claus, my own ideas and plans for the future, for the development of my business expenditures, I must believe in my ideas, because if you can't believe in your idea, then who will?
More than all of this, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" has made a special place in me so that I may carry around a piece of childhood quality forever, as I cross over into full adulthood and eventually old age. I will grow up, no doubt about it, and I will experience life and grow and change as fate wills it, but I will not forget what it was like to play outside in the summer or to wake up on Christmas and run downstairs to see what Santa brought. I will not cast off my own imagination and ideals as childlike folly, like I see so many of my peers doing now. I will grow up, but I will not forget the wonders of being so small and having such large, large ambition. As I grow older, I know that I will achieve my own success in the business world and own a flourishing company, but that I will also be able to sit with my own children and read, "He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood."
As I read through the rest of the book , I found a special meaning that I can carry with me not only at Christmas time, but year round.
Are you supposed to stop believing because your eyes tell you to ?
This story of Santa Claus has also given me hope and the knowledge that I can do and accomplish all that I want to, that anything is possible.
ThatAll ambition will blossom into something amazing, not only through hard work and a quick wit, but if you truly want it and believe in it enough to make it happen.
... because if you can't believe in your own idea, then who will?
More than all of this, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" has made a special place in me so that I may carry around a piece of childhood quality forever, as I cross over into full adulthood and eventually old age.
I will grow up, but I will not forget the wonders of being so small and having such large, large ambition. ---I love this sentence!
Nice ending!! Good luck in school and have fun!
:)
