Hi there, this is my essay for the Common Application Essay #1. I'd love advice and comments, thanks.
Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
"Have a great day!" said the cashier, thrusting the oddly proportioned cardboard box into my nervous hands.
Three years ago, I purchased my first guitar at the music store. At the time, I had no idea how to tune it or even hold it properly. Yet the thrill of being able to learn, to one day perhaps become a musical legend, led me to spend my entire savings on an electric guitar. The first couple months were tricky, when I learned how to fret the basic notes and hold chords. I often winced in pain as my soft, inexperienced fingers were cut by the thick steel strings. However when I saw a video of my favorite blues guitarist, Stevie Ray Vaughan, playing his heart out on much thicker strings than mine, I told myself to persevere. I practiced my lesson book diligently every day until I learned my first three chords, A, C, and E.
The next couple of months were filled with hours of eagerly carrying my guitar around everywhere, strumming notes and chords whenever I could fit time. Now that my fingers had grown calluses, fingering notes no longer caused pain. Instead I was filled with delight at the clean, crisp notes emanating from my amplifier. By my first year, I could play one of my favorite rock songs, "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But my progress and willpower to learn didn't stop there. In subsequent years, I moved on to more advanced songs such as Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' Bout Love" and Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child." I started bringing my guitar over to my friend' houses, jamming to backing tracks and laughing while we tried to out-do each other with a better solo than the last. At the present, I'm working on a tune called "Surfing with the Alien" by Joe Satriani, my most difficult piece so far, with advanced bends, vibrato techniques, and tremolo picking.
As I look back upon my musical journey today, I realize my growth not only as a guitar player, but also as a student. My guitar has been an emblem of my chaotic and turbulent journey through high school. The day I bought it was like the day I entered freshman year, both times inexperienced and unsure of what to expect. Yet as I entered both realms, I saw the similarities between the two. Learning the guitar and performing well in school both demanded my maximum determination and patience.
It took determination to continue playing after my fingers started to protest in agony. It also took determination to get up at 5 in the morning after a long physics study session. Determination is the force inside of me that keeps me moving even when my senses tell me to stop. Through perseverance, I was able to work 12-hour days with my friends in order to win the school-wide catapult competition. In the end, we managed to smash a school record (347 feet!) and have a handsome siege machine that we were proud of.
I also found out that it takes patience to learn a new instrument. Mastery comes through practice and diligence. It takes endless picking exercises and scale drills in order to learn proper technique. This analogy also applies to my schoolwork. At the beginning of junior year, I struggled with AP Calculus. I became frustrated at derivatives and their meaningless "slopes" and "tangent lines." However after applying the same hours of meticulous practice to Calculus as I would the guitar, I began to appreciate the beauty of expressions such as "infinitely small" and "definite integral." As third quarter rolled around, I became so interested in calculus that I would spend hours outside of the classroom, practicing extra problems and writing my own practice tests. My calculus teacher, Mr. Evans, told me that he was astounded at my academic growth throughout the year and awarded me a small plastic robot toy as a gift for my hard work.
As I sit here with my guitar in my lap, I turn on my amplifier and begin to play a short blues riff. Sometimes I noodle around for 5 minutes, other times an hour. Often I improvise, throwing notes and scales together as fast as they come into my head. It's not just the motion of my wrist, strumming the chords, that guides me. For once, there is no set "rubric" that defines what I can possibly create. But for now, it's just me and the guitar working together, singing a song in perfect harmony.
The first couple months were tricky, when I learned how to fret the basic notes and hold chords .
I think your paragraph will flow better without the second part of that sentence.
first three chords: A, C, and E.
Otherwise, I think your essay was pretty good :]
...box into my
nervous hands.----> I don't know how to explain why, but it is better without "nervous!" :-)
At the time, I had no idea how to tune it or even hold it properly.
I KNOW! It's so terrible when you are a beginner and can't tune it very well, so everything sounds awful...
...until I learned my first three chords, A, C, and E. ---> I think if you play A, E, and D together it has a nicer sound! I dn't know if A, C, and E fit together. More importantly, I don't know if they fit at the end of this first paragraph! The end of the first paragraph is supposed to be a sentence that leaves a thought to linger in the reader's mind so s/he can figure out what the essay is all about.
How about telling the reader about A, C, and E as part of paragraph 2, and end paragraph one with a thesis statement that captures the meaning of the whole essay in a single sentence. :-)
I am interested at the subject of this essay (its easier to read than most of the others). Though, I believe it could be much better.
About grammar I didn't notice any mistakes. Though, the most important problem stands in the fact that this essay has not enough feeling as it should. The language you use is correct but too rigid. Why not concentrating more at the guitar itself as inspiration to you, or at the beautiful sounds it emits? This isn't just to make the essay more emotional, but also to show how passionate you are about music.
Also, I would suggest that you remove the whole paragraph about Calculus. It distracts the reader from the main topic, plus if you remove that, your essay will be shorter (now its a bit too long) and more compact.
I hope I helped :)
Please, if you have time give me some advice in my recent posts? Thanks.
