<p>I know it's really last-minute, but I am looking over the Common App essay that I am planning on sending to Harvard and a few other schools of its caliber, and I'm not sure if it's good enough. Let me know what you think, and don't spare my feelings because I have a back-up essay I can always use.</p>
<p>Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?</p>
<pre><code>Believe me when I tell you that I have tried long and hard to think of a poetic way to say this, but my efforts have been futile. Therefore, I must bluntly admit that I am most content in my bathroom. Before you assume that the following 600 words are a Captain Underpants-esque farce, understand that my bathroom holds a great deal of significance to me, not as a place where I, well, you know, but as a haven of creativity.
One of the perks of being the only girl in my family is that I have a bathroom of my own. It is connected to my room, so when I was younger, I considered it to be an add-on to my bedroom that just happened to have a shower. During my quintessential horses phase, I would bring miniature pony figurines into the bathroom and have them act out elaborate soap operas. I consider this to be the earliest stage of my love for writing. Not some of my finest work, but then again, it could be argued that Black Beauty drowning in a dangerous river (a plastic, two inch horse being placed in a sink) was some powerful stuff. Regardless, my bathroom seemingly inspired me to be creative, challenge convention, and think outside the box.
Spending an unnecessary amount of time in my bathroom is a quirk I never grew out of. While I dont play with toy horses anymore, I do play the guitar and ukulele, and the best songs I have ever written were composed in my bathroom. Some friends of mine recently caught me playing and singing in my bathroom, and when they asked about this weird habit, I rationally explained that the acoustics were better in my bathroom and gave a look that dared them to challenge me. Im very defensive of my bathroom; we have a long history of inventiveness.
I have developed a couple theories as to why my bathroom serves as a birthplace of my greatest epiphanies and creations. One is that its complete lack of interesting qualities or eye-catching features, as well as its solitary, pigeonholed role, forces me to use my imagination rather than surroundings to create my own ideas. My second theory as to why I love and am so inspired by my bathroom is that it feels safe. It shares a wall with the laundry room, and the faint rumbling of the dryer is soothing and constant. My bathrooms small size also contributes to its overwhelming aura of security; the room actually seems soundproof, a notion that has been proven false many times when my brothers have commented on my less-than-stellar singing in the shower, but the feeling remains nonetheless. When I can clear away all the worries clogging my brain, there is more room for thoughts and ideas.
Whether Im creating stories about horses, writing songs, or just contemplating the state of the world, my bathroom has served as a home of free thinking, a right that I value tremendously. John Steinbeck summed up that value best in my favorite book, East of Eden (which can be assumed to have been written in a bathroom until explicitly stated otherwise) when he wrote, And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world...This is what I am and what I am about. Unorthodox as it may be, I found what I am about in my bathroom. Maybe its a stretch, but I have always equated ingenuity with my bathroom. With societal norms out of the picture, whos to say that a lavatory cant be an imaginary land/recording studio/library hybrid? Just something to think about next time you powder your nose.
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