<p>Saw this on an old thread, and thought this would be a good idea to help make everyone relax as the days draw nearer. Besides, I’m very curious as to what the rest of you put.</p>
<p>What did you write about as your favorite character for the Barnard Supplement question?</p>
<p>I’ll go first: </p>
<p>Margot, from “The Royal Tenenbaums”. Like the rest of Wes Anderson’s creations, she’s just entirely fantastical and too cool. She’s aloof to the point that she barely responds when a car crashes into her house (if anyone saw the movie, that’s one of the funniest scenes), yet there’s an innate sadness to her. Her style is exquisitely je ne se quois, with the fur coat, girlish hair and eyeliner. She’s a chain-smoking playwright. Her hidden record includes losing a finger, traveling all over the world and a spontaneous marriage to a Jamaican recording artist. She’s just so COOL. Margot is who I would have liked to be if I weren’t too much of a natural good-girl.</p>
<p>I wrote about Madeline, the little french girl of Ludwig Bemelman’s famous storybook. My parents first read Madeline to me when I was four years old and later, it was the first book that I learned to read myself. In my response I talked about how Madeline defined fearless for me, with her french je ne sais quoi (we have an overlap!), and in my life I try to forget my inhibitions and be fearless, thinking of the little girl who showed me the way to the world with a simple bonjour. I’m also thinking about double majoring/minoring in french. She’s quite an unexpected response, but writing about her came so easily.</p>
<p>Rose, from EAST by Edith Pattou, a traditional fantasy I read for the first time in middle school - it’s a retelling of a Norwegian folktalke. I highly recommend it.</p>
<p>I wrote about two things: How I fell in love with Rose as a character the first time I read it, and how every other time I’ve reread it I’ve fallen more and more in love with writing and storytelling as an art.</p>
<p>Rose is strong and independent, and she is one of the few characters like that, that I’ve understood (i.e., when she sacrifices for her family, I understand WHY).</p>
<p>Study break! Wej, that sounds interesting - I’ll have to check that out. Are you going to be an English major?</p>
<p>Gloriachristmas, it seems that we both love the French. I’m a huge fan of French style - so effortless and uncluttered - and lately I’ve also been getting into French film and music. I’m a huge fan of Sofia Coppola and her Francophilic tendencies rubbed off me, apparently. I’m also a bit of an Anglophile but then again, every girl who likes Austen and afternoon tea says that, so I suppose I’m not that special I desperately want to speak French but I’m terrible at languages and I lost the opportunity to take French when my family pressured me into taking Spanish instead. Ah, well.</p>
<p>Don’t worry, Kiwi, Austen and tea are highly ranked on my list of favorites; for my daily routine response i very nearly wrote about drinking tea every morning! If you haven’t seen Amelie, you should definitely see it. Take french at Barnard? crossing my fingers!</p>
<p>Wej, there is are many used copies of East on barnes and noble’s website that i am very tempted to buy now. What are some of your other favorite books or stories? You seem like you would give good book recommendations, if that’s not a weird thing to say!</p>
<p>I do indeed plan on being an English major. I hope to double major in Anthropology and, if possible, triple major in Education. (I want to be a novelist and also work in the publishing business as an editor, but I do need a back-up plan . . . LOL.)</p>
<p>I am a BIG Austen fan. PRIDE & PREJUDICE will forever be my standard for romance, no kidding.</p>
<p>Also, do see Amelie. One of my favorite films!</p>
<p>As for other books, hmm . . . SHIVER, JELLICOE ROAD, 13 REASONS WHY, THE SHADOW OF THE WIND, anything by Jodi Picoult . . . Those are the things that come to the top of my head right now (my favorite contemporary titles, at least). Otherwise, anything by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Novakovich, Edith Wharton, Mary Gordon . . . </p>
<p>Bell from beauty and the beast .Belle sees the beautiful person inside Beast, and he sheds his anger and sacrifices his own happiness for hers. Belle is a good role model, valuing reading and individuality. The enitre thing is somewhere on my computer I need to find it I pretty much compared the doisney version Bell and the real fairy take version which her name is Beauty</p>
<p>How about we expand this to all of the questions?</p>
<p>(I’m going to skip the “Why Barnard?” question because I feel that it’s been covered in one way or another on these forums before.)</p>
<p>What are your daily routines?
I wrote about how I do whatever I can to avoid daily routines (i.e., a good friend of mine and I use our school as a playground, finding new ways to get to class–the crazier, the better).</p>
<p>And which issues would you bring to the table with a governmental representative?
I wrote about poverty and how the issue has become extremely politicized, even though there are definite international/multilateral measures countries could take if they only wanted to.</p>
<p>Wej - I’m a double major in English and a social science (Sociology/Urban Studies for me…can’t decide) as well! If you liked Jodi Picoult, I’d suggest THE MEMORY KEEPER’S DAUGHTER.</p>
<p>I could only take Spanish in high school, so I’m really psyched for French in college!! (My interviewer told me that Barnard had and still has an AMAZING french program!)</p>
<p>I did Manuela from TODO SOBRE MI MADRE (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER) - fantastic, insightful Spanish film about a woman who travels to Barcelona to find her former lover to tell him that she bore his son, who dies at the beginning of the movie. The whole story intertwines people that her lover knew and how they all come to terms with forgiving each other. I talked about how Manuela can forgive people for the mistakes they’ve made and the hurt they’ve caused. I found it extremely easy to relate to after going through some familial problems, so the writing was able to come quickly too.</p>
<p>Meursault in the The Stranger by Albert Camus. I found it so fascinating that a person would be that unwillingly and emotionless to defend themselves when they are on trial for murder and how this reflects the state of our legal system. </p>
<p>Oh darn. Most of you did a female character. Blergh. </p>
<p>My daily routine, or rather writing tradition is to read graffiti on alleyway walls. I am a writer and I find that getting a glimpse of a person’s thought process really helps with writer’s block.</p>
<p>I wrote about eating breakfast with my dad in the morning. We are both such busy people that it’s rare we ever get to reflect on our days until the weekends when we both are so tired. Early mornings are our time.</p>
<p>In retrospect, I’m wondering if this was too sentimental of a topic? My mother and english teacher cried… hmm…</p>
<p>For my issue, I talked about going directly to the superintendent of our public schools about the foreign language offerings in all public schools. The language departments was the first to receive a huge budget cut at the end of last year. Now, for example, the middle schools have gotten rid of all their language programs and my french teacher teaches six classes a day, encompassing all levels of french classes, which goes beyond the union’s contract. He does it, though, because he does not want to see his native language disappear. I am very passionate about languages and cultures; I feel the open up the world so greatly and I feel that my life has been changed drastically by taking a language. (I’m also the president of my school’s foreign language club so I mentioned our meetings, cultural days, etc.)</p>
<p>emilina and rebama-i did belle too!
i hope this isnt a bad/unoriginal sign
i figure its ok because most girls i know who got into barnard wrote about some disney character
good luck!</p>
<p>Wej- don’t worry. When i first told my guidance counselor about my issue/foreign language response she told me that it fit my interests and personality very well, but she also said to stress why I would choose to go local if I had all the time in the world and anyone in the world for a discussion. I think large scale and small scale both work fine as long as it fits who you are!</p>
<p>gloriachristmas - i think sentimental ones are already the best. it was probably the most humane thing they’ve heard from all of our apps. <em>sigh</em></p>
<p>i did turning off all the lights in my house at night 'cause i’m always the last to go to bed; it symbolizes how everyone is so vulnerable when no one can see you and how difficult it is for me to take off that extra layer of armor when there’s light.</p>
<p>global/local issue-wise, i talked about the sex trade happening between north korea and china and how the world has done nothing to prevent it. i talked about how coming from a korean background and living in the usa for almost all my life, it’s ironic that we talk about stopping sex trade in europe and the americas but neglect the abuse that’s happening to north korean women when all they want is asylum.</p>
<p>Wow. I thought I had interesting essays, but now, reading everyone else’s has made me realize that I am such a crap writer. </p>
<p>My government official one is about pollution in Hong Kong and how ever though hong kong has one of the highest pollution indexes in the world, they haven’t done anything to curb it.</p>
<p>I wrote about education and how the public school system in the US is appalling. No one gives a two cents’ crap about education, which btw takes up a miniscule amount in the federal budget. Most students are polarized, either completely hung up on statistics and “achieving” as opposed to learning what matters, or they don’t learn at all, like the second graders I tutored at an inner-city bilingual school who barely knew how to add. Education has, is, and will always be the future of the world, and I don’t understand why education reform isn’t at the forefront of issues. All we hear about are failing state scores, (and states who are trying to inflate them instead of actually <em>teaching</em> the kids) yet most adults just blubber over the US College ranking reports. I wrote in my essay about how this is something that I’d like to help eventually - through whatever means possible. I’ve been lucky enough to have an education that’s not only taught me me the required subjects, but one that’s fostered my values for life, community, and learning. Man, that sounded cheesy. I promise my essay was nowhere that schmaltzy.</p>
<p>Anyhoo, for my personal essay, I talked about my personal blog. It’s like a little nice online diary, and I just like to talk about whatever, from my sisters to cookies to relativism. </p>
<p>I also added a little supplement where I talked about my passion for books, pop culture, and movies in particular.</p>
<p>I wrote about both the US and Denmark. For the US one I wrote about health care, since we have free health care here. For the Danish one, I wrote about immigration, since some people for some reason have problems with people from different cultures living here.</p>
<p>I don’t know how great it was, but I felt that they were both topics that I’m passionate about and that I have an opinion on, especially since I’ve experienced both and the difference between them in Denmark and the States.</p>
I desperately want to speak French but I’m terrible at languages and I lost the opportunity to take French when my family pressured me into taking Spanish instead. Ah, well.</p>