<p>i'm going to post my second prompt (UC transfer) essay for any of you older, perhaps wiser, CCers to peruse as please. yes, it's already been submitted, but i'm getting restless and just read a few other essays... felt like seeing how mine comes off to parents, who hopefully aren't as jaded as we students. </p>
<p>any criticism / thoughts highly appreciated.</p>
<p>thanks.</p>
<p>prompt 2: Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?</p>
<p>Three years old and all but three feet tall, I used to climb up and peer over a polished oak fence that separated my yard from my neighbor, John’s. John would often be tending to his vegetable garden, clad in oversized blue jeans that cheated gravity with the help of a pair of fluorescent red suspenders. He usually pretended not to notice me. Finally, knelt over a tomato vine one spring afternoon, John raised his head and hollered, “Curious little bugger, ain’cha!” And I am.</p>
<p>Nothing has proven more essential to my nature than exploration. In my early years, my parents presented me with Erector Sets and Marble Drops that did well to distract. Custom-designed space ships quickly filled every empty spot on any available bookshelf in the house. My room - more than a mere site for sleep - became the spot of an architectural oddity upon which marbles traveled impossible paths: under bed, over desk, and down the drawers to arrive full-circle at the landing.</p>
<p>Along the climb to adolescence, my exploration moved from amateur construction to adventure in the abstract. Tom Sawyer, Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn were my mentors in mischief, advising me of the “proper” ways to attract the attention of my very own Becky Thatcher(s). Amid the mischief, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins helped show me the meanings of responsibility, honor, loyalty and perseverance. It was through their trials and tribulations that I first came to see how one’s character is solidified in his/her actions, especially when the correct course is not so clearly defined. </p>
<p>As a teenager, I fell for a shapely four-and-a-half feet of polished brass that came gift-wrapped with unprecedented mystery. Through the trumpet, I was made able to pillage firsthand Miles Davis’s raw unpredictability and Coltrane’s perfect cacophonies. The faculty of playing music and actively experiencing improvisation, the transcendence of idea and sound, afforded me a heightened understanding and appreciation for any piece of music I have since laid ears on.</p>
<p>After a welcomed growth spurt at age fifteen, I sought to discover the breadth of my athletic abilities and entered the world of skateboarding with strict resolve. A few years after landing that first basic kickflip, I had picked up industry sponsorship for hurling myself down flights of fifteen stairs, sliding unforgiving steel handrails toward concrete landings that did not hesitate to punish, in the most Draconian sense, for faulty foot placement. Skateboarding is simply rolling on or jumping off of the ground while keeping a few ply of maple wood, some steel and a little polyurethane controlled beneath you. But within this simple and confined system, there is a quality of infinite variation that makes the blood and broken bones worth all the while. </p>
<p>Looking back, I can think of few falls from which I have not risen, fewer books at whose covers I have stopped, and still fewer sour notes that have caused more frustration than desire to persevere. When John confronted me about my curiosity as I was inspecting his yard on that distant spring day, in all his wisdom, he neglected to mention how healthy it is to be curious by nature - to question further, to break the surface, to gain insight and then to apply new knowledge to life. Not a day goes by during which I am not led by an insatiable desire to know more than I had known at the day’s start, and to gain some new experience. My curiosity has now impelled me onto an intellectual pursuit that I feel can only be continued by direct exploration of the University of California.</p>