<p>haha good! i’ll be happy to be your first official friend after you turn in your deposit. I actually turned mine in today at DOTL! btw, Dean J, Peabody is so quaint. If I had to read a google applications, I would love to do it there. </p>
<p>and of course I’ll see you in the fall. just a note, when I explain things, I often employ similes b/c it helps me think and you remember so when I make outrageous similes (like college essay=stripper), I do it so you will remember what I say. now, your requested criticism. :)</p>
<p>“I started on one discussion, mentioned the dialogue as sort of anecdote, and went on to another.” too complicated. the best way to approach this would have been to write a complete introduction and then start it somewhere in the middle of the intro. This way, the essay would be complete to submit to other schools and would also make more sense when starting in the middle of a sentence; it’s always easier to cut then build. </p>
<p>regarding your second essay. this seems to be a “first, then, and finally” type essay so you set yourself up for disaster. Your first sentence is the hook of your paper and it often can give you a sense of what’s to come. your first sentence is essentially “my favorite thing is …” 2nd graders are taught to write this way and I would expect a higher caliber of writing form someone writing their college essays. I would have been more interested if you wrote “my favorite thing is barney. He’s a purple dinosaur and has a magic treasure chest and sings my most favorite song in the world.” why? because if you chose barney, you would have chosen something unconventional and so, someone reading your essay would be like huh? let me keep reading to figure out this logic. </p>
<p>The only way a “My favorite this is…” answer to a prompt works is when the answer is something unconventional and completely out of the box. My answer to this prompt was the artificial bladder but I didn’t choose to start out the essay this way because I wouldn’t have utilized the full potential of my answer. Similarly, the piece of music you picked has so much potential but you overtly simplified it and did it no justice. </p>
<p>When you think of music, close your eyes and let the music paint a picture in your mind. Then paint the picture for your audience. Don’t let them know that you’re talking about a piece of music. You attempted this but it didn’t work because there was a lack of concrete detail. You vaguely describe a fantasy. is this an erotic fantasy? a childlike fantasy? a dream? what? again, you leave too many things up to the reader; you need to guide the reader and provide a narrow venue for them to interpret your writing so that way they understand what you’re saying. </p>
<p>“careful, exploratory footsteps.”</p>
<p>what are you walking on? are you walking on clouds? dirt? golden fields of grain? cow dung? You thought that this was a lot of detail but it really wasn’t. It was actually really vague and left the reader wondering that the hell you were talking about. you didn’t explain this lost world idea and now your walking through it. it’s too vague.</p>
<p>However, I think that **the answer to a prompt doesn’t needs to be something out of the box or creative; it needs to be creatively presented and hold the attention of your reader. ** If you could pick any topic you wanted and I had to write specifically about a pound of cow dung, chances are that I would rock you with the cow dung because the amount of attention paid to detail makes a huge difference and from what I’ve seen of your two essays, you like to go for the vague idea approach. </p>
<p>I went ahead and listened to this piece and this is what I get (for the first 30 sec that I get free on iTunes).
It’s quiet. right before the spring dawn. the dew rests lightly on the leaves on the closed buds. A fairy (yes, i watched fantasia a few too many times) lightly touches each closed bud and as her touch graces the flower, it blooms into maturity. Her flight is not straight; she hovers and looks for the perfect flower to touch before making a decision. As she touches each flower, the amount of light in the field continues to grow and marks the gradual ascent of the sun into the sky.</p>
<p>You could easily make this a metaphor for your own life and a commentary about the effect of knowledge upon an individual; the fairy represents knowledge and free speech. The closed flowers could represent those living in blissful ignorance that accept the daily grind with a resolute and grim countenance. By giving them knowledge and the power to escape the closed system, the flower blooms and as a result, opens up the mind. In a way, the flower could be considered a paradox because it represents ignorance; by sheltering yourself within the flower, you shelter yourself with your ignorance and keep yourself from seeing the outside world. Knowledge and education give you the power to release yourself from the protection of ignorance but at the same time, expose you to a whole new world. And now, if we generally accept that light=knowledge, the sun would be rising which would also play on the idea of education and the fruits it brings. as the fairy opens the flowers, the sun continues to rise into the sky to banish the darkness so the initial exposure is the hardest one but after that, the effect continues to snowball. and this would play back into how it surprised you because of your whole thing with free speech and the singaporean gov’t and all that jazz. To end it, I think I would have ended it simply with something like " the piece? Gabriel Faure’s P</p>