<p>I've been having trouble deciding what to write about for the essay, "What work of art, music, science, mathematics, or literature has surprised, unsettled, or challenged you, and in what way?" </p>
<p>I thought about writing it on The Five People You Meet In Heaven and how it affected me. I feel like I can make it decent but I'm afraid that it might be too boring or clich</p>
<p>I would say that you shouldn’t be too concerned about what others think. If you can write a good essay, and make it interesting, then it should be fine. You need to pick a topic that is important to you, that is the whole purpose of these essays. An admissions officer doesn’t want to see some rehashed essay, or a clearly professionally edited one either. They want to see who you are, and if you are a good fit for the school. If you can find a topic that resonates with you, then that is what you should write about, as those are the essays that will stand out.</p>
<p>Four years ago, I wrote about Gabriel Faure’s Pelleas et Melisande: Sicilienne, op. 78. In retrospect, I was kind of rushed and I didn’t do perfect justice to the piece, but try conveying a musical or artistic motif, especially an abstract or classical one, since it’s challenging and fun.</p>
<p>I think you should do an artistic or musical piece if your high school career is science-heavy, and do a scientific one if your high school career has focused on art or the humanities. It’s easy for a work of art or music to unsettle you, and you can always almost describe it without settling into cliche, because each person’s interpretation of music or art is just so different. Motifs are just one of the things that really stick in your mind, and it can set up quite complex abstractions unconsciously and/or effortlessly.</p>
<p>I would stay away from literature (it’s not so striking to write about words using words) unless there was really a piece that <em>really</em> fundamentally changed the way you thought. (For me it would be The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but I only encountered that book in college.)</p>
<p>Now if you had to draw or sing or play or perform an experiment on a piece of literature, that would be another story. ;)</p>
<p>Oh it’s also fun to describe or analyze a film or popular (even top 40?) music piece that everyone knows, but it seems to have impacted you in a way that makes you interpret it differently compared to everyone else, maybe due to a unique experience, memory, association, or set of circumstances.</p>
<p>For me, I wrote about how Pelleas et Melisande would sometimes come on the classical radio shortly before I would leave to walk to school in the mornings in Singapore. It would just transform my perception of the world into something entirely different and transport me into this fantasy mood, especially as it would play at the same time the sky would turn into all sorts of fantasy colors. However, it would end in this quite haunting sort of way that seemed to describe the alienation you’d feel upon returning to a cherished place and finding it not the same as you first remembered it. </p>
<p>I wrote about how this especially spoke to me because I was a cross-migrant that had just returned from the US to Singaporean upper primary school at the time, where I had this sort of third-culture alienation upon finding that my “home” now treated me differently; it continued to speak to (and haunt) me as I migrated back to the US again a few years later, to find that my sense of home was now a fantasy that existed in no place on Earth.</p>
<p>I’m sure that Gabriel Faure wasn’t writing about immigration when he wrote Sicilienne-- in fact Pelleas et Melisande is a love story. But Sicilienne had enough abstraction for me to interpret it as something quite different (or maybe in a way, sort of the same?)</p>
<p>If someone helps you edit your essay, make sure they are not allowed to take the heart and soul out of it in the process.</p>
<p>For his two essays for UVa, My son wrote one that was funny and one that was very heartfelt. My wife and I mistakenly tried talk him out of sending the heartfelt one because it was very non-academic. He sent it anyway. In any case, he was admitted and really enjoys UVa (although he complains he works much harder than his friends who went to other colleges).</p>
<p>Yeah, students at other colleges don’t have to work hard. My son goes to VT and he said it’s not challenging at all, especially the engineering program. Easy charlieschmeasy!</p>
<p>No one said anything about Va. Tech. But while you mention it, at Va. Tech games, why do they keep a garbage truck in the end zone? </p>
<p>To keep the flies away from the cheerleaders.</p>
<p>The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a book I like a lot. I decid to write about Life Is Elsewhere, another book of Milan Kundera, which really changed my view of life. I think it would Ok if I can really show its impact on me. Is there any one who has read that book and can help me woth the summery of the plot? I am an international applicant and really struggle with the language, cause i actually read the book in Chinese.</p>
<p>I haven’t read that book, but I’m reading a lot of existential Chinese literature at the moment (I’m a biochem major, but I’m taking the Chinese in Translation course, “Women Writing in Modern China”). Have you read Xiao Hong and Bing Xin (from the 1920s-1940s)? Just curious. I find a lot of their writing resonates with me, and they touch on similar themes. </p>
<p>Do draft your thoughts out (you can send a draft by PM), I’d help you proofread and give you suggestions on structure and delivery. 
</p>
<p>You really shouldn’t summarise the plot. You should find some way to express the essence of how it has impacted your thinking. Don’t give any background, just find some way to express the ideas and give snapshots of the book that can help the reader experience its intensity. </p>
<p>If I had a chance to rewrite my essay, I’d give it a more elegant and poetic form, since that’s one way to compress a lot of meaning into say 250 words (that’s how long these short essays are, right? I forget.)</p>
<p>I am writing an overdue Chinese lit paper at the moment; I decided to choose the topic of extrinsic versus intrinsic depression in early modern Chinese literature and their differential portrayal in women and men as portrayed by male and female authors. Have you read Xiao Hong, Bing Xin or even male writers like Lu Xun? (I know Lu Xun is in the national syllabus in China, but I’m not sure about the former two.) I’m dying for some perspective!</p>