<p>Since all application processes are done and everybody is anxiously waiting for our college decisions, I thought I would post what I had written for my common app essay to lighten the mood and reduce some anxiety. I only asked a few people (3-4) what they had thought, but I wanted to see what the CC community had thought (Was warned not to post my essay BEFORE application due dates). Since the dates have passed, I really don't care what happens to it.</p>
<p>The prompt was:</p>
<p>"Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you."</p>
<p>My response:</p>
<pre><code> I dreaded the inevitable, reverberating cackle of the alarm clock, hearing its first use in months. To the mind of a teenager who could not stop perspiring, let alone try to speak to members of the opposite sex in clear English, school represented the closing bars of a cell more closely than the entryway to an education. Clumsily dragging myself out of bed, I violently shouted a profanity as I stubbed my toe on my night dresser, quickly whipping my head out of the door to see if my mother had heard. On the first day of middle school, one must come prepared, and I armed myself to the teeth with the school supplies that I wearily stood in line for more than three hours to purchase.
</code></pre>
<p>In order to make sure my breath didn’t match my self-esteem that morning, I picked up a small pack of Trident gum with the last of my supply money. Lugging my small, generic lunchbox around, I nervously approached my personal Everest: surviving three years of junior high. Noticing that many of my peers had joined me from my elementary school, I was not sure if I should be happy or hesitant to see them join my ranks once again. Overwhelmed by the expansive, daunting interior of my new reality, I aimlessly walked around, only halfway-hoping to find my classroom before the sound of the tardy bell. Between fumbling with locker combinations and forgetting room numbers, the first few hours of middle school were largely uneventful; that is, until the final bell rang, and, for 30 minutes, my frustration gave way to my old savior: lunch time. As I sat down at the end of the absurdly long table with my friends, I cautiously opened my lunch box to see what intriguing (or repulsive) wonders lay within its plastic shell. Knowing my Chinese family’s penchant for stuffing fried beetles in my lunch, I opened it as one would Pandora’s Box. Much to my surprise, my parents had succumbed to my pleas for social mercy and prepared something perfectly normal for once, a sandwich. After cautiously opening the box, the gum pack I had purchased earlier conspicuously lied there, innocently staring at me. It must have also immediately caught the attention of my friend, as he swiftly turned his head and casually asked for a piece. With poise foreign to me prior to this day and a smirk, I demanded two dollars for the entire pack. He replaced my smug expression with a bemused half-smile when he took the deal and, even more surprisingly, seemed happier than I. The moment the crumpled dollar bills entered my palm, the sweat began to dry up while my confidence instantly reached a new level. I had made nearly a 100 percent profit in a few seconds; strangely, this information immediately registered in my head in this fashion. Through the past years of quietly lurking around dinner parties hosted by my parents, I would eavesdrop on their conversations with their coworkers, overhearing voices boasting of four percent profit increases that sounded negligible to my untrained ears. I soon understood.
While my peers simply saw candy as a vessel for inserting sugar into their bloodstreams and frustration into their teachers, I saw a medium through which I could update my Pok</p>