I am a High School junior that just wrote a first draft of a college essay and I want some constructive feedback. Honestly, I don’t think it makes much sense or flows at all. This essay is for the common app prompt regarding a central story. Here it is:
“Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.” Oscar Wilde
Proposition: I may or may not ever meet my father.
Two weeks before her seventeenth birthday, my mother gave birth to a son. The child’s father was getting ready to go to college; he did not have time for a child. As the story goes, the father went on to college to pursue medicine leaving the teenage mother and child alone. My mother took it upon herself to love, to support, and to nurture this child in spite of the absence of the father. Growing up, the child took it upon himself to not make an excuse out of not having a father around. This child refused to be the victim of the situation. This child wanted to be the hero. This child is me.
Proposition: I am a compulsive hoarder.
No, I do not have piles and piles of newspapers, photographs, clothing, food, or books. I do not hoard anything physical; rather, I hoard ideals, thoughts and memories. I remember the smell of an open mind and perspective when I read my first book, I See, You Saw. I have been hoarding words ever since. I remember the sound of my great-grandmother’s mellifluous voice as she would sing, “‘Tilingo, Tilingo,’” to me every day from the day I was born until I turned four. I have been hoarding notes ever since. I remember the feeling of water in the third grade. We called ourselves “The Stream Team,” and we took it upon ourselves to document and photograph several “bodies” of water and their surrounding ecosystems. I have been hoarding curiosity ever since. I remember the sight of dimly lit streets in the night as my mother, my sister, and I meandered the streets of Romeoville in order to escape my belligerent, abusive step-father. In retrospect, it was God’s light that was guiding my family to safety. I have been hoarding hope ever since. I remember the taste of humiero: an herbal, homeopathic Santería elixir. It tasted of light oil, roasted corn, ripe grass, sharp coconut, sweet honey, Florida water, and a hint of aguardiente. Growing up with a grandmother who happened to be a Santera did not necessarily result in baking cookies and going about various arts and crafts, rather, we read about spirituality, we talked about the origins of the various patron saints, and we often Santería’s relevance to Roman Catholicism.
My mind is a black hole in which all of my memories enter, only to escape to an alternate universe. A universe where nostalgic and progressive memories converge to form one infinite, overlapping stream of thought not confined to the order and discontinuity of this universe.