You spilt tea on your knees, call that Chai-knees!
This is the context of the joke.:
Another woman I came across, was a singer in the army. She told me that when things got stressful, she would sing to the soldiers as this provided them with an escape from the war. Hearing her story made me realize how important it is to partake in hobbies. As a result, I started making time for hobbies such as playing Basketball and making “Weezy Jokes”(jokes that mock rapper Lil Wayne’s style). Playing Basketball has allowed me to get some much-needed exercise and “Weezy Jokes” such as “You spilt tea on your knees, call that Chai-knees!” provide my friends and I with laughter. When I play Basketball or laugh at a joke, I forget about all the stress I have from homework and just enjoy the moment.
So my question is whether adcoms will realize that it is just harmless humour, or may some take offense to it?
Today where everything must be politically correct, it is extremely foolish to write “harmless jokes” like that especially in your college essay.
Quite frankly, it shows lack of professionalism and carefree attitude, which colleges do NOT look favorably upon.
If you submitted this already, forget about going to the schools you have submitted your essays. Even though I personally think it’s a harmless humor, almost all institutions in the US today has a zero-tolerance policy for racial biases – even a hint of it has a detrimental effect.
@viphan @JustOneDad I see where you are coming from, but I personally don’t see the racism in the joke. I sent this essay to Purdue(as well as some elites) and have gotten in. It is merely an example of wordplay.
@bodangles someone pointed it out to me on CC. However, I had someone who used to work for a respected university in Canada check over my essay and she said it was fine.
Okay, you may not and other people may not, but there is no question that some people take offense at that sort of thing. People take risks with their essays all the time.
Let us know what other “elites” that essay worked for and we can file the info away.
@JustOneDad the only thing im having trouble imagining is what they may take offense to? The fact that I mentioned a race? It’s not like I degraded a race in anyway, I just casually mentioned it to show some wordplay.
I was too distracted by the misplaced comma in the first sentence, the capitalization of “basketball” and the pronoun subject/object issue Nerdymom notes to have gotten to the racist joke.
You referred to it as a “Racist joke” in the title of this thread. It’s not been a problem for at least one school and a person who looked over your essay, so there must be something making you feel that way.
And…looks like I attributed your quote to viphan instead of you above, which of course was a mistake.
@JustOneDad I am feeling this way because someone commented this on one of my other threads and said it resembles some joke: chinese, japanese, dirty knees, look at these
Again I don’t see how my joke relates to the one above.
Is it safe to say that since I got into Purdue that I am “safe”?
I am an international and was missing like 3-4 required courses(although my ACT was 33 and marks are better than avg), yet I still got in.
Honestly, this is frustrating because I worked hard to get my scores up and then it may all get ruined because I put in a harmless joke.
@viphan yes, as I mentioned, I had gotten my mom’s friend, who worked at Queen’s University as an Adcom for their education dept., to look over my essay.
^^agree with @JustOneDad. OP. You may have gotten into Purdue (a state institution that basically accepts students “mainly” based on stats) but, you may have a problem with the list of other private schools on your list that are more holistic with many very liberal minded admissions officers reading your “essays” which may call attention unnecessarily to one’s personal character…even in “jest” as you say. I’m sorry, but I would be concerned if I were you.
Again, someone else apparently did feel it was offensive. When you are the admissions officer at …whatever elite school, you can make your own decisions as to be offended or not by things like that.
What would the email say?? “I’m sorry I was accidentally racist”? Explaining you think it’s a “harmless joke” won’t help your case if they’re already offended, I don’t think.
You’re in at Purdue. How much are you going to worry about whether the joke will have an effect at the schools?
My personal feeling tends towards not drawing attention to it. You did it. What are you going to say, you rethought it? They’ll know other people weighed in on it with you.
The people who could best answer the question of what to do would be current or former admissions officers.
