<p>So i post my common app essay and UChi’s supp here, can anyone do me a favor to chance me based on those and my stats? THX</p>
<p>here’s my common app essay:</p>
<p>Love across the Chasm</p>
<p>What is love without having to say I love you? Everyone answers differently; now I think I have an idea of what my answer might be.</p>
<p>Years ago if you asked me who understood me the least, I would have said my mom and she would have said me. Despite living together for all of my life, we still seem worlds apart.</p>
<p>When I first entered middle school, I was desperate for a cell phone. The high-tech age was dawning on Shanghai and for a kid to be caught in school without a cell phone meant peer pressure and unpleasant remarks. But when I asked my mom for a cell phone, she rebuffed me. As she put it, I spent most of my day in school, had plenty of time with my friends and did not need a cell phone. When dad gave me a cell phone a year later, mom remained hesitant. As a result, she kept checking my text messages to see who I was texting and where I was going. Sometimes I would find her reading over my shoulder while I was texting. We fought a great deal over our differing ideas of privacy and independence. In Chinese culture, children are supposed to obey regardless of personal preference. While my mom was raised this way, I saw it as a violation of my own rights. I wanted more freedom and privacy, not less.</p>
<p>For a long time, I blamed our conflicts and differences on the generation gap, but gradually I think it is not that simple.</p>
<p>My grandpa once told me a story about my mom that she has never told me. It was the 1970s when mom was a teenager. Once she asked for a new dress but grandpa refused. He thought the old dress was fine, but mom said it was not pretty enough. My grandpa explained that he did not understand my mom for the longest time because his upbringing did not teach him the value of beauty. </p>
<p>It was a generation gap that grandpa was not aware, a gap that was far more superficial and far less conflictive than the one I experienced. Nevertheless grandpa’s story cast a new light on my troubled relationship with my mother. I realized that our gap is not just generational; it is also cultural. Idea of beauty has its root in Chinese culture, but ideas of freedom and privacy have no place in traditional Chinese teachings. Instead, they are fruits of western civilization, where I have learned and incorporated these ideas into my own life</p>
<p>Living in the most westernized city of a rapidly globalized nation, I feel myself standing in the crossroad of east and west. Although my mom and I still speak Shanghainese at home, English now plays a larger role in my life. When I am reading Catch-22, watching Transformers, listening to Hotel California, my mom often ask me what is all this ‘stuff’ because she does not understand English. I used to be annoyed at her trivial questions, but reminiscing those moments, I now feel guilty. As a parent she naturally wants to be involved in my life and it must have made her feel inadequate when she could not be even when she tried. In those moments, I should have helped her and not pushed her away.</p>
<p>It took me a while to realize the hidden cultural gap; it took both of us a longer time to improve our relationship. I have learned to control my temper and be more transparent. Mom also compromises: she stops reading my texts and tries to give me as much freedom as she can handle. </p>
<p>Now when I am writing this essay, that sense of guilt gushes out again. Letting me go to pursue my physics dream in the more supportive and creative environment of US is probably the hardest decision my mom has ever made. I know she is fully aware that, if she lets me go now, the gap between us will be an ocean. Nevertheless, she is willing to bear the pain because she wants me to succeed more than any one else.</p>
<p>To me, that is love without having to say I love you.</p>