Posting my essay for all to see - I have no use for it anymore

College Essays
1

<p>I'm class of 2008 / 2012. I'm done. Here is my CommonApp essay.</p>

<p>Use it as an example of badness/goodness, learn from it, plagiarize it, whatever.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I clicked a button and created a canvas. A lonely, almost blank screen, it was one of thousands of standardized and tabulated web pages, with only my online moniker at the top to distinguish it as my own. That was my debutant, an admittedly unremarkable event. Around the same time as my friend’s Bar Mitzvah, my own initiation into adulthood was an eBay feedback page. At the impressionable and naïve age of thirteen, I was awed by my new opportunities and its subsequent responsibilities.</p>

<p>I created my eBay account to sell a guide I had written for an online multiplayer game, and I dived into my e-merchant role with gusto. Despite the fact that I was merely peddling an information product for dollars per auction, I was quite intimidated by the gravity of my new occupation. You see, the marketing and business acumen of running my auctions were fluff to me, lighthearted technical details - but this was not the case with my brand new feedback page. As I had never been held accountable for the effects of my actions as an adult before, I was reminded of Spider-Man’s advice, “With great power comes great responsibility”. Serious business indeed.</p>

<p>The one-liner judgments that customers wrote about my products and services carried more weight with my inexperienced self than those critics could possibly have known. Minor complaints became embarrassing reminders of my incompetence, small words of praise seemed to redeem my self-worth, and the job of providing feedback to others was handled with laughably excessive reverence. When I was playing the online game itself, childishness and cruelty were the norm. But with my transition to eBay, I became the innocent little kid in a room full of adults, eager to prove my maturity.</p>

<pre><code>I was enchanted by eBay’s feedback mechanism, which quite literally seemed like the anecdote for everything. A simple yet elegant means of making sure that users got what they ultimately deserved, it was like instant karma served in a cup. A similar system could be enacted to right various injustices! The restaurant that gave me food poisoning could be publicly admonished, the cheating husband could be denounced on a page that would last forever, and the corrupt despot could be shamed out of office through the safety of one’s own home.

Obviously, these grandiose ideas did not last beyond my first impressions. I soon realized that the hours I spent helping customers with questions could be substituted with a painless “you first” feedback policy. Unless you insult their mother, rarely does anyone leave poor, or even mediocre, feedback if the threat of retribution is present. I laughed at the previously appealing premise that a simple reputation page could instill virtue over the Internet. Who needs cheap prices, quick delivery, or friendly service when a crooked system was already in place and exuberant, glowing feedback was easy to come by?

Thankfully, my ensuing Machiavellian inclination to game the system, which brought me the majority of my few negative feedbacks, was weak and short-lived. I discovered that though everyone had relatively good feedback, it was the unsung honesty and hard work that would set me above my many competitors when I began my full-fledged eBay store to sell online game items. This was just good business sense, and I put in the extra mile in a notoriously fickle and demanding industry, where items would sometimes disappear because of hackers and impatient customers practically lived at their desktops.
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<p>I did my best to act judiciously with my customers, offering refunds for vanishing items and staying up late to help them transfer merchandise. Were these extra steps necessary when I had posted repeated warnings of the potential risks? Absolutely not. They probably would have left positive feedback for me anyways, and indeed there was hardly a stark contrast between my feedback and those of my competitors. Yet, I was not tied down to my insecure obsession with stats anymore, and the eBay feedback page was no longer my master. My instant karma had revealed its cheap and insubstantial nature, so now I turned to real karma, the intangible kind. With over 4000 positive feedback, it hardly mattered anymore if I received a spattering of negatives, so why did my feedback keep getting better and better as I cared less and less about it? The answer is that I was no longer acting as a good businessman; I was acting as a good person, and it’s to this mindset that I owe my wild successes as an eBay Powerseller.</p>

<p>In hindsight, my evolving attitude toward the almighty feedback page reflected the growth of my maturity. Well here I am, with more wisdom, more empathy, and more humility, ready to take the final step into the real world. As I continue my business via my own website, I’m the slightly more experienced adolescent in a room full of adults, but still eager to prove my maturity. This time, there won’t be a feedback page to keep me in check. And nor will I need one.

[/quote]
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2

<p>Wow, this is really good. I hope you got in wherever you applied.</p>

3

<p>Great essay, mate. Where’d you get in?</p>

<p>You remind me a bit of a good friend who was mercilessly teased by half the grade for being a Powerseller on eBay. He lived and died by the feedback he received, but by the time he’d left school he had over $40,000 in the bank, just from online auctions. Admittedly, he wasn’t as upfront an honest as you seem to be. He did a lot of buying and reselling for more; got his IP banned well over fifteen times. I think he’s going to own half of Australia by the time he’s 50.</p>

4

<p>he (she?) got into penn state and swarthmore. (i checked his other posts). and waitlisted from u of chicago.</p>

5

<p>yuhh correct</p>

6

<p>a fantastic essay sir</p>

7

<p>admissons are over.. heres my essay</p>

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</p>

8

<p>that was a good essay dave. I forgot I was reading an essay when I read it.</p>

<p>

I liked that line : ).</p>

9

<p>I too am posting my essay here for all to see. I know it sucks, and this essay was the main reason why I got rejected from so many schools. However, I did get into Amherst and none of that matters anymore.</p>

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10

<p>I like this. Kind of our own “Admissions Essays that Worked.” </p>

<p>I only applied to Georgetown (School of Foreign Service) and Boston College. Accepted at both EA.
I broke lots of college essay writing rules. </p>

<p>It was a toilet in Fiji that brought me to tears. I had seen hundreds in the past year, but this one affected me in a way I never expected. That morning, the pounds of emotion that I had forced away came crashing into my life, leaving me to reevaluate everything I had become. </p>

<p>The summer before my senior year, I sought comfort in simplicity, focusing on what was important in my life: my faith, my family, and my future. In my heart, serving others is a celebration of grace. I was alive; I was blessed; and despite my concerns, I was entirely thankful. Fittingly, I first heard about Fiji through my pastor. People of all ages from around the world were working together to improve the infrastructure of rural communities, and Reverend Clayton did not have to ask me twice. Four weeks later, I was on a plane with one large backpack, an address, and little other information concerning my stay. In the month to come, we worked wherever we were needed and slept wherever we could. I cannot think of a time when I was so dirty, yet so happy. I learned to love the plates of cassava, to embrace our communal river baths, and to thrive in uncomplicated village life. However, it truly was the work I valued most. We painted. We laid cement. We tiled. We put together fences. We built toilets. I never thought that sanitation would mean so much to me.</p>

<p>Fiji was a far cry from the world I left behind. Almost exactly four months earlier, I walked away from a physically abusive relationship. In its aftermath, I was left lost and confused. My pain brought me face to face with the one thing I despised – apathy. There was a part of me that gave up on idealism. Nevertheless, with time and pure determination, I began to heal. I refused to let the experience define me, but in my heart the pieces did not fit. I could march for peace in the streets of Los Angeles, but when the time came for me to speak on my behalf, fear left me without words. </p>

<p>My abuse made violence real. Images of hate and destruction were not just stories but my reality. I came to understand that heartbreak requires much more than an apology; it craves a response. Today, I am no longer angry but instead frustrated with inaction. There is a point where we must stand, scream if necessary, and if all else fails, jump onto the table and demand that something be done. I am passionate about non-violence, conflict resolution, gender equality, and tolerance. However, I was unsure about their future in a world seemingly filled with indifference. Never before had I identified so closely with the Jackson Pollock paintings in my father’s art books. Complexity had taken on a new connotation. </p>

<p>Five thousand miles away in the small village of Nasivikoso, we were working on a new plumbing system. There I had been tribally adopted and lovingly embraced by one of the local families. Just a month before, they had lost their baby boy to an infection, possibly preventable with better hygiene. As we laid the piping, I began to cry for my Nene’s (mother’s) loss. Poverty was her abuse, and it simply was not fair. Sitting there, sobbing at the sight of the village’s first flushing toilet, I realized how confused I had once been. Devastation had left me uncharacteristically skeptical, but here were Americans, Fijians, Australians, Brazilians and Israelis working together. Their sweat-drenched faces proved me wrong. Our reality may include injustice, but it will not go unanswered. What we did was neither televised nor broadcast, but it meant the world to a community that deserved every minute of our labor. I know now that progress will not be mandated nor photographed; instead, it will come as a result of simple acts, quietly done, cloaked in humility. Whether it is domestic violence or racism or poverty, it can be changed one toilet at a time. Covered in dirt in Fiji, I was reminded that I had the strength to love and to heal and to forgive and to change what was broken in my life and in the world. Losing myself in the service of others, I had found myself.</p>

<p>I understand the clich</p>

11

<p>LMAO i read “it was a toilet” and stopped
hahahahahha</p>

<p>nice thread should be bookmarked</p>

12

<p>Well I may post mine, but I’m not sure if posting an essay about your last name on the internet is the smartest thing to do.</p>

13

<p>i would post mine but nobody would learn from them…they’d make u dumber</p>

14

<p>LOL grade inflati0n… :D</p>

15

<p>hec2008, that was a really superb essay. Definitely one of the best I’ve ever read.</p>

16

<p>thanks, that means a lot. it took a very long time to get the tone right. it is hard to write about something serious, but not sound like you are taking yourself too seriously. </p>

<p>i really think this could be helpful to future classes, anyone else willing to post theirs?</p>

17

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<p>i agree :)</p>

18

<p>skunk, that essay sounds awfully familiar (UChicago essay thread?)</p>

19

<p>can you guys post the schools you guys got into to please?</p>

20

<p>ee33ee - You are right, that essay inspired my essay.:slight_smile: I read the poem for the first time there, I loved it. I did some research on the poem, and read a lot of interpretations. Then I started tinkering about, just writing whatever I felt like writing, and then, in a time frame of about 5 hrs, this essay was born. Never meant to write this essay, it just happened!</p>