| anyone feel like ripping on my essay?
I worried a lot doing my applications that I hadn’t done enough, that I’d done too much, that I can’t hold a match to the Roman candles that are my competition. But don’t think I’ve stopped, don’t think I can sleep at night, because I haven’t, and I can’t. When you, the illustrious admissions officer, read this application, you can’t see the hundreds of hours logged handing out flyers or baking brownies to sell for a quarter apiece. Looking at a transcript, you can’t see the countless nights spent awake until three in the morning, hammering out a piece on Jungian archetypes in the works of Wilde and Goethe, or on the evolution of the salamander, or the complexities of irregular Spanish conjugations. But I can see you, shaking your head because I’ve gone on a tangent, and of course you know there is more to me than what’s on the paper, and that’s why this question is being asked in the first place.
I’m sorry. Now I don’t even know how to answer.
I spent a month in Bolivia this past summer. It took me nearly a year to earn the money for it via a minimum wage job. I also gave up my French classes in favor of studying Spanish. All my friends asked why I was “wasting” my money and my summer – and to be honest, I couldn’t answer them. I didn’t know why I was going, but I did know the experience would change me; I didn’t want to be the same person I was as a freshman, and I didn’t want to think like the people asking me for explanations.
And I was right. I did change, and for the better, I think. While we spent the month longing for Chinese food and hearing phantom cell phone rings, we also became sophisticated, in the sense that our knowledge was no longer limited to that which we had garnered in suburbia. We came back and appreciated toilet paper, shampoo, trash collection, grocery stores, our native tongue, and democracy. We returned and were soon back in the swing. But it was always resurfacing in my head, the thought that those people who had so effectively changed my life did not have the opportunity to get back into the American swing. They were still in Bolivia, living their lives in the “quiet desperation” that we, as free citizens of this great nation, are so able to avoid. I didn’t live with orphans or buy from street vendors to forget them. I taught English classes – and left only a taste of our language, but not of our way of life.
I’m in the middle of an independent study on microlending. I’m going to use my own funds to go back to the capital city of La Paz to find motivated citizens in need of start-up capital, and I’m going to document their stories. Both the Bolivian horizon and indigenous peoples are beautiful, and should not be ignored or forgotten. All they need is a chance, and though on a small-scale, I want to give a few of them opportunity.
Also I'm debating (RD) between the College and SFS, thoughts?
1470(770V/700M)/800 Writing/730 Lit/? USHist
White female from MA, tons of leadership and clubs, extra language study, long time job and community service, fantastic rec, NMS semifinalist, national writing recognition from NCTE
Thanks for at least reading...
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