<p>Common Application Essay ( Write about a person who influences you. [I picked my dad]) My father begins by shouting my full name, but for privacy, I have to only start with Ali, which is my real name lol. I am a mathematics major btw. </p>
<pre><code> ALI BLANK BLANK BLANK! my father indignantly proclaimed. His long wrinkly finger was pointed at me as sharply as the blade of a knife. I looked desperately at my father, and then at the beach floor where the calculus textbook lay on a gold pillow like an exalted heirloom. It was the perfect day: no clouds, a cool breeze, and the everlasting warmth of sunshine on my back. I looked out at the blood orange horizon as the sun rose from the east, but only until my father snapped his finger; my attention quickly returned from the scenic Coney Island shoreline as I saw we were about to sit on the sand to begin our monthly ritual: studying calculus using the same textbook my grandfather taught my father with in Pakistan.
My father lifted his pencil, seeming to not only address me, but the crowd of beach-goers around us: The derivative is the measure of how a function... I listened carefully, and my father handed me the pencil, but this month was different; the calculus came easy, but the implications came hard. I gave him back the pencil after I finished optimizing the function, trying not to glance at his bloodshot eyes. As the sun began setting to the west, my father stood up: this signified the first break after several hours of number crunching and challenging word problems. I felt a connection deep in my heart: Hey dad, let's go Shoot the Freak. My father gave no response. I tried again in Urdu, yet I knew even our mother tongue could not save me from this disconnection. I left my father's silence, and slowly walked myself into the sea until the last wave reached over my head and stung my nostrils.
I proceeded towards the calculus textbook, and sat down again. The sand had blown onto the warm pages; I delved into parametric functions. Hours passed, and the glare of the pages as the sun started to set was too much for my eyes to bear. I stood up and noticed the empty beach. My father was nowhere to be found; I left the comfort of my studies and drifted around the boardwalk, only to reminisce the long gone past where empty pill bottles did not give me the shivers. It was only recently that my father came out of the rehabilitation center. I lay down on a bench adjacent to the restrooms where an old woman asked me if I was okay. I did not know myself, although I gave her a smile: the universal language.
I proceeded back to the beach, and saw my father sitting down on the burning sand. He leaned back and sighed. I wanted to speak to him, ask him about where he was the last few years of my life, whether he loved me, but the few glances of his expression I witnessed seemed to rule out any conversation in any language other than mathematics. It was not that my father was unfriendly so much as that he looked like he was otherwise occupied. His thoughts were on some past time, approachable to me only through the binder which carried the written elements that became our means of communication. I slowly glanced over my father's shoulder to see the next topic was integration. My father turned back the page so that I could see his version of the problems I solved alone. I closed the calculus book just as the last specks of sunlight shimmered across the Coney Island shoreline. I handed my father the pencil as we walked towards the boardwalk, silently, yet eagerly waiting for next month.
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Were you notified by mail?</p>
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