Hello!
I am plannng to submit this essay for my common app.
I spent a lot of time on this and thus, I'd like to know how you guys think of this. I will appreciate all of your comments & critiques. Thank you!
Prompt:
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.
"Now, watch." She began to stuff the plastic cup with paper towels. I watched silently, wondering at her demonstration, as the cup bulged out until it looked like a deformed egg of a giant bird, a crumpled white mess. The nurse poked the cup with a pen from above once or twice, then more forcefully. Crack. The cup gave in, shattering and spraying its pieces everywhere. The nurse looked into my eyes. "And this was your life."
Yes, that was my life.
Anyone who had taken a glance at my high school life would say nothing was missing from my experience, not a single opportunity. I was participating in varsity football, speech team, choir, mock trial, student government, the Catholic youth group, and robotics team, to name a few. And yes, all at once. My résumé was so full and rich, gilded with the pride of my quasi-omnipotence and overflowed with the glory of my countless achievements. Such was my misguided self-importance, my leviathan pride.
Yet my life, in fact, was not exactly as glamorous or complete as my résumé. What did I lack? I thought I should fill my emptiness by achieving no less than thousand things at once. A brilliant idea: the less time to worry about my time, the less worry about my time. With this "remedy" and my joy of impressing people with the sheer number of achievements, I thought I could overcome my existential anxiety. Oh, yes, why couldn't have Sartre and Camus thought about that.
But eventually, I had to face my anxiety for what I could not achieve. I was always dissatisfied by day and exhausted by night. I continued to struggle my way through, yet I didn't realize what I truly lacked: the sense of direction. The pressure was building up, and my life was about to explode. All it needed was a little nudge.
The pen that shattered my cup was an injury at a football game. A broken ankle means different things to different people: severe pain, an excuse not to go to school, or the stink from the three-month unwashed foot. To me, it meant the inability to continue those myriad activities I was participating or planning to participate in. I panicked. While waiting for surgery, I could not help but to tell the nurse about my anxious anticipation that I could not continue the myriads of activities. And she showed me, with a cup and a pen, what my life then was really about.
After breaking out of my former life, as a chick does after breaking out of an egg, I did not know what to follow. How could I suddenly give up all my achievements? But the months of inability sifted my obsession into finer grains of interest; I finally realized that I had passion for a few activities, such as speech club, journalism, and choir, even after taking hiatus. After my ankle healed, I returned to those activities and only those. Knowing my passion, I could finally enjoy my activities, and consequently, my life.
Now, as I gather my records for college admission, I give a glance at my résumé and cannot help but smile with a sense of irony. My vanity has surely decorated my records. But thanks to the nurse, now I know that those two dozen lines mean something less than my truer self. I have more to offer than my ability to do forty thousand things at once and complain about myself; I know where my passion lies.
Overall, this essay is quite good.
Here are some of my suggestions:
1. I think the tone of third and fourth paragraph is a little bit grey.
2. Since you named your essay as "lesson learned from my ankle injury" I think you should put more emphasis on the lesson you got and how it changed you. Add more details on that part will add color to you essay.
3. perhaps you can change the name of the essay because I could probabaly guess what you are going to say when seeing the title. Perhaps a lot of people have written the same theme before. So make the title more engaging will be a helpful method to let your essay stand out! ^^
It's only my opinion. Try to assimilate what you think is rignt!
Keep working and good luck!
Dear. tiantian12
thank you so much for your comments. I really appreciate it and agree with you entirely.
Regarding you points:
1. Yes. I was concerned and a little bit worried about my third and fourth paragraph for the same reason you pointed out. I think if I could elaborate more on the "true lessons" that I learned from it, I think these will definitely look better. I'm still in the process of thinking of that lesson and also need some help of that as well, which jumps to my question concerning what you wrote as third point: if this kind of theme is a little bit trite, what d you think would be a proper lesson from this experience? The thing is, I know this essay can turn out to be a typical I-am-a-good-boy-essay if edited without any special points in that way. In fact, I really want to make this more of a bad ass essay so that it can stand out among gazillion essays that ppl at admissions office will read. So, I would really appreciate if you can help me thinking of that special lesson.
2. I think you have an excellent point in terms of titling the essay. I was not really concerned about the essay title at all; In fact, I did not even intend to title this just simply as "The lesson learned from my ankle injury." Well,first of all, if I do need a title, can I stay with this one just change the contents of the essay? or must I change my title as an attention-grabber after modifying the contents(the third and fourt paragraph) ?
Again, thank you so much for your help. Obviously, I am very much needed. =) Thanks!
Alright, there are some points here and there to be fixed, but most importantly, I need to tell you this.
The essay question is:
'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.'
^You do not answer this question at all. I want you, to look at your essay, and tell me where, do you say that you have discussed either 'what you would bring to the diversity in a college community' or even 'an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you'
You may have a fine list of extra cirriculars. However, failing to answer the question means a lot more to the Admissions Commitee.
Dear. Liebe
OOOOOOOPS!!!!!!
That is totally my fault. I meant to put another one. I have no idea why I put that one on this. Maybe I was out of my mind. ha
The prompt is supposed to be:
Evaluate a significant excperience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Thanks a lot for pointing that out! I greatly appreciate it! =)
okay, though U show that its topic is another, I really dislike your tone, there's something seems not attractive, really. It's like a little bit showing-off and a sometimes vacuous, I hope U could still show your talents, of course, but more secretly. Don't show clearly like that. Your essay would be so much better
Uhm, another thing isreading this essay made me think You are a very talent man, but can not point out what you learn from this jury. Why don't U sit alone and wonder what is the true lesson U learn from that or is it just a made-up lesson?? Yes, there is something missig but U must find out yourself, so the reader can totally understand U.
good luck!! I'm eager to read your second essay, it would be awesome
Well, I understand that breaking your ankle is a significant experience. But, what has it's impact been on you? From what I can see, your list of activities has gone down but now you are taking part in activities that you like. Perhaps, this has been impactful . You should be more clear in saying how this has impacted you in that case.
Dear. Shine and Liebe,
Thank you so much for all of your comments.
I think I comprehend your points and why you thought so. But most of all, thank you so much again for your help.
Anyways, I thought both of you guys had similar types of comments especially about my "lesson" in terms of my passion.
First of all, I think I have a pretty decent knowledge of distinguishing a good essay from exceptionally dull ones which I absolutely detest. I cannot call my essay a good essay; however, I have a pretty straightforward standard of my own when writing a "fascinating" essay, not a "typical I-am-a-good-boy" one. Again, I'm not claiming my essay be very intriguing, but, at least, that is the goal I most strived hard to accomplish regarding this is for college admission. I may be right or wrong and I know everybody has different opinions and I respect that. But, I assume, for people at the college admission who more likely read more than hundreds of applicants' essays a day, it will be nearly impossible for them to completely read through all of the applicants' essays. One of my friends is actually the admission director at Williams College and admitted that sometimes he could not help himself but throwing away the papers that seem to be typical good-boy essays after reading a first couple lines of essays. Not that we must make our intro absolutely shocking and attention-grabbing to make our essays look stand out among others, I thought I should make my essay different from others: just by simply not saying I did/experienced this and thru that experience, I know I can do ~ because I'm that talented.
Here lies my reason for making my conclusion of my essay like that: I didn't want to directly state that, from my ankle injury, I have learned even though people are able to do a many different things at once, a few can do them WELL. In fact, this IS the lesson I learned. Like I mentioned in my essay, I guarantee (I'm not bragging, in fact i've got nothing to brag about) I was involved in more than about 8 activities in which I spared at least two hours a week. While participating in these activities, I really seem to lack my true direction or objects of my passion. Half of the activities I could not care less. However, after my ankle injury, I realized the importance of focusing on ones that I really like, which is one of the most important factors of participating in any activities. Consequently, by doing so, I was able to qualify myself as All-State choir, journalism writer, speech, and State soccer tournament. But, I didn't want to elaborate any more on the result of my lesson like that. It would do nothing good for me except making my essay a typical essay in which I just say I became a better person because of the impact of this particular experience. I think I insinuated enough to elucidate the fact that I learned how I became to focus on the things that I had passion for + give my full effort in only those and ultimately, aware of my true passion.
I guess I did a poor job obviously, but I tried to not cross the line between entirely bragging about my quasi-omnipotence and confessing that I did all of my activities purely to fill out my resume, which is not partly true. I was aware of that neither of doing these would give me no benefits. This is exactly why I inserted the sentence (Such was my misguided self-importance, my leviathan pride.)
Do you guys think it is too weak? Does my essay really sound haughty??? I tried my best to cover it by several sentences. If you think they are still weak, then I am in a huge trouble because then I'm actually being a typical good boy that I tried to eschew.
Seriously u guys, thank you so much for your help. Your comments and contributions are extremely imperative and vital for me. Plz keep being such a huge helper. Thanx!
