The given prompt was:
A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.
Here's the essay, thanks!
My first thought when I read the fifth essay topic was that I finally had a perfect topic to write about. I have a broad range of life experiences, hooray! After this brief celebration I read the entire question and my heart sank. Diversity. I'm not diverse. How is a middle class white kid living in a city that is 96% white, diverse? My initial excitement kept me curious and I began to brainstorm. Clearly I'm not ethnically diverse, but how else can someone be diverse? Then it hit me.
In Fairmont you either play 3 sports and spend your free time watching ESPN or you do your homework, study for the ACT, go to speech meets, and memorize your songs for the musical. In High School I couldn't decide which one of these local stereotypes I wanted to live, so I chose both. In the fall I spend the hour between soccer practice and musical rehearsal eating and finishing my math homework. In the winter I spend the time between speech practice and hockey practice watching an NHL game and perfecting the introduction for my speech. Then in the spring I take breaks from tweaking my forehand volleys to volunteer at the elementary school, lead a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting, or let my anti-drug and alcohol group know that we have a meeting coming up. In addition to year round sports, fine arts, and meetings for other organizations, I deliver pizzas 3 nights a week at the best restaurant in town.
So now that I've figured out how I'm diverse, why is that important to me? I have two best friends that I couldn't live without. I spend my time outside playing soccer with one and my time in a suit performing speeches with the other. These are the two most important people to me outside of my family and if i didn't participate in both realms of activities I wouldn't have one of these two. The people I have met through my experiences in the fine arts have challenged me to become a better student and a better performer and their athletic counterparts have pushed me to a high level of physical fitness, inspired my competitive spirit and taught me lessons about teamwork. The combination of lessons learned from the two different worlds I live in have made me a better student, friend, athlete, competitor, performer, and person. Every experience I've had in speech, soccer, tennis, hockey, FCA, the musical, and countless other activities has showed me the good in the people around me and taught me to be open to anything and anyone.
How is a middle class white kid living in a city that is 96% white, diverse?
I know everybody thinks of diversity as "racial diversity" but it does not necessarily mean that, you could use the definition in your essay if you want, which diversity means "differences" So, it can also mean "a variety, not all the same." Can you relate to those definitions? Because what you explain in your paper is how you were "not the same" you did not "fit the mold" which is a very good thing! Be sure to fully answer the prompt question- I think you tend to ramble a bit, so focus on what contributions you could make to the diversity of the school. Mention how you would involve yourself in activities in college. One sentence you wrote is too long:
The people I have met through my experiences in the fine arts have challenged me to become a better student and a better performer and their athletic counterparts have pushed me to a high level of physical fitness, inspired my competitive spirit and taught me lessons about teamwork.
You did a great job with this paper. Good luck in school!
