<p>So, this is my personal statement. I got in with it to a few schools, rejected by a few. I have a B average, and I had two C+'s in my senior year. My junior year was mostly B-s. I had a 3.6 weighted gpa. I got into Villanova, BU, Fairfield (20000$/yr scholarship), Fordham (full scholarship), Ithaca (12000$/yr scholarship.) (Where I’m going.), and UNC-Wilmington. I was rejected from Northwestern (I applied to their theater program, probs why I didn’t get in) and Brown. </p>
<p>Not sure if that makes this a good essay or a bad one. I’ve heard that it’s “unique”, that it’s “almost unusable”, but the best thing I heard was from the mods of my school’s lit mag, who said it “sounds quite unlike a college essay”. Whatever. I like it, and I’m posting it. </p>
<p>(…I’m also more than thrilled to go to Ithaca, if anyone’s wondering. I visited and fell in love, and I think I’d choose it over NU if I had the option.)</p>
<p>Klutz!</p>
<p>If there was a grade for clumsiness, I would definitely earn an A. And not, you know, a night-school bribe-the-teacher-with-homemade-cookies kind of an A, either. No, Im Ivy-League clumsy, and theres no doubt about it. I think I was seven the first time I realized I was a member of this elite group. Until then, my mom had managed to convince me that when my brothers called me a klutz, they were just being mean. (Moms are awesome, arent they?)</p>
<p>But then came the night of my schools sock hop, the first grade social event of the year. I was so excited about the pink poodle skirt I was going to wear with my musical-note scarf that I was literally bouncing around the house. Unfortunately, in my eager mad dash-ery, I neglected to notice that the cord to our iron was draped at calf-height across the carpet. As I ran through my parents room, I tripped on the iron cord and sent the iron flying into the air. Somehow, it landed almost perfectly flat on the sole of my foot, burning me. Of course the iron wasnt on my foot for very long, but it was on long enough to burn my foot so badly that, at the end of the evening when my mom was taking off my white bobby socks, I had a blister covering the entire sole of my foot.</p>
<p>Fast forward ten years. The burn on my foot eventually went away, thanks to some Silvadene cream. The clumsiness, however, has not. I still regularly trip and fall, often over nothing. Currently, Im trying to tape my two smallest toes together; last week I ran into a doorjamb and broke my toe. I do that a lot, so I know the procedure pretty well.</p>
<p>Its not just walls I run into, either. This past summer I was trying to run up the down escalator in Bloomingdales, mostly because its something Ive always wanted to do. (I secretly suspect everyones either tried it or wanted to try it.) It was going well, until I reached the top. Interesting fact: escalators slow down at the top. I didnt know that, so I also didnt know I had to run slower at the top if I didnt want to end up tripping and falling so spectacularly that the women who work at the makeup department downstairs were simultaneously laughing and gasping at me. When the entire incident ended, I was in Williams-Sonoma with my knee bandaged by a sales woman who had called me a poor dear before fixing my leg. That was nice of her–I wonder if she was a klutz, too?</p>
<p>The irony is, though, that even though you could define hapless with only my name and picture, sometimes Im actually, well, graceful. Almost. Take last year, for instance, at a rehearsal for the dance company Im in. My solo part in our dance always gave me trouble, but that time, I managed to execute the ball change-run-jump down to the ground-half moon up-double pirouette-flick-run-chasse-step-stag leap perfectly. I had never danced better. Unfortunately, while walking off stage, my foot got caught in the gap between where the floor ends and the wall begins, and I smacked into the wall and crumpled to the ground.</p>
<p>I guess Im a savant of clumsiness, and not just in dance. Really, though, its not a bad thing. For example, I can make a perfect pie crust. I can also coat the entire kitchen in flour. Usually I end up doing both at the same time. I also do all kinds of crazily dangerous things for tech, like crawling up in a loft, going 50 feet into the air to hang lights, or tinkering with electronics bought off eBay. Ninety percent of the time, things go great, but there was also the time that I got covered in fiberglass splinters. And that time I knocked down an entire wall.</p>
<p>The upside of being clumsy is that Im great at dealing with injuries. I can wrap your sprained ankle exactly like the doctors do, or treat you when you accidentally cut your hand on a razor blade. I know to put Neosporin on a scab to prevent it from scarring, and I know how to make a butterfly bandage. Thankfully, most of my accidents are littleIve never been to the emergency room, though Im sure if I had to go I could pick up some great tips.</p>
<p>I think Ill always be clumsy: with shaky hands and a tendency to get overexcited, theres not much I can do. I dont usually get too frustrated about it, though. Most of the time, my injuries are caused by me striving to do something new and, in my opinion, utterly awesome. Theres no way Id stop dancing, running up escalators, or doing tech in order to be a little less awkward. Its just who I am. So when you meet me, I might be rubbing the elbow I knocked on my desk, or apologizing to the person I just ran into. Its ok; Ill be just fine, like Ive been a thousand times before.</p>