<p>Common App question 1:Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you. </p>
<pre><code>Odd as it may seem, my most significant experience did not come to me in a classroom. It was not an epiphany of how to manually calculate Pi to one-hundred places nor was it a cure for the common cold. It came to me in my bedroom, one of the least academic places in the world, as I wallowed in the depths of self-pity and shame. The moment arose from what, at first, I had perceived as a complete failure. But before I get ahead of myself, please allow me to begin at well, the beginning of my intellectual journey, which was four months before my "aha!" moment.
During the summer before my sophomore year in high school, in band camp, I received the second violin audition part for the Philadelphia All-City Orchestra. As the name implies, only the most talented young musicians in the city of Philadelphia are able to perform in this exclusive orchestra, and my dream had been to be counted among such musicians since I was nine years old.
From the time I arrived home with violin and the photocopy of Handel's Sixth Sonata clutched in my hand, I practiced the piece time and time again, day and night. On more than one occasion, I found myself climbing out of bed in the wee hours of the morning to practice the audition piece, using some tissue stuffed into the F-holes of my instrument as a mute. Even during my classes at school, I rehearsed in my head, counting every sixteenth note meticulously, and pointing out areas of my performance which needed improvement. One may argue that I had gone completely insane from all the late night practices and strange-sounding humming that I did in my Geometry class. But all that effort was simply tangible proof of my dedication of earning a seat in All-City Orchestra.
In the fall, when the day of the auditions was finally upon me, I was trembling with a mixture of excitement, anxiety, and some slight nausea. But that weird emotional cocktail was quickly forgotten as my audition number was called. I walked into the classroom in which my audition was to be held with my head up high, and played that sonata as if I had written it myself. As I exited the room, I was welcomed back into the real world with smiles and congratulatory pats on the arm. Needless to say, at that moment, I felt as if I was on top of the world.
After several weeks of nervous anticipation and pestering of my school's orchestra director, the results of the auditions were finally released. I snatched the results from the band room wall and scanned the list for my name with military precision. To my deep chagrin, my name was nowhere on the list to be found. Suddenly, I was three years old again. I could do nothing but stand in the middle band room floor and sob like my dog had just died.
I wallowed in misery as I commuted home that day, wondering why I had been rejected. Hypothesis after hypothesis wandered through my mind: "Did I play too fast?", I pondered, "Too Slow?". After a little more pondering, I came to the conclusion that the reason for my denial did not matter, the truth was that I was an inferior violinist. This supposition caused me to be depressed for months, far too depressed to even consider picking up the violin again.
I refused to play the violin for a long time, several months, if I recall correctly. The very sight of the instrument made me want to weep. The notion that they are a failure at their craft is every artist's worst nightmare, and I was living it every day.
But one day, in the middle of my marathon of sulking, my mom offered me some sound wisdom which would permeate into all areas of my life. She said, "Look, you need to get a grip. I love you, but this misery has to end. Just because you didn't make the cut for one orchestra does not show that you are a bad violinist".
"But mom", I whined, "I wasted literally four months of my life practicing for an audition only to get rejected, I feel like a huge failure".
"Yes, maybe you did get rejected, but that does not mean that you failed. As I listened to you play that piece time after time, I noticed that your playing improved by leaps and bounds".
She was right. In my pursuit of a place in All-City, I had perfected my playing in third position and honed my vibrato. I suddenly realized my mother's point: that I had not failed because I had grown as an artist. I became aware that anything I did, be it academic, artistic, or otherwise was not done for the purpose of recognition or award. The ultimate goal of all of my endeavors was to grow as a person and have a richer life because of the experience, not the results.
I implemented my newfound outlook on life in my academic life as well. For the first time since beginning school at the age of six, school was no longer about competition for me. I no longer concerned myself with getting the highest grades in my class, nor who had scored higher than I did on a particular test. Now, I was studying to learn, to understand, not only the subject in the book, but how the subject fit into the world as whole.
I delved into each and every class with a newfound fervor. Even Geometry, my least-favorite subject gained new respect from me. I saw filling angle measures into diagrams not as menial "busy-work", but as a way to understand how the very building in which I was taking the class was deigned and built. William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe transformed from meaningless names on the covers of old stories in which I had little interest, into visionaries who had found a way to live for eternity through their works of art.
I say these things not to say that I had been a bad student before I got dumped by the orchestra of my dreams. I had always earned good grades before then, but I never really learned. Yes, I memorized historical dates and cellular organelles for tests, but after the assessments had passed, all of the information I had studied would vanish from my mind.
After my audition and the emotional rollercoaster which came with its results, it was clear that growth, not lists, nor numbers on a page, was the true measure of achievement. I was suddenly comfortable with putting forth my own best effort, even if that meant I got and "85" on a math test. I was able to put aside that immature competition between the "smart" kids in high school for the top grades. But despite my new, admittedly "Hippy-ish" attitude, I got better grades in school, and continued to improve in playing the violin.
To say that I was rejected from All-City is not entirely true, even though I did not make it into the orchestra, I was offered a place in the saxophone section on the All-City Marching Band. But most of all, the biggest lesson that I took from this whole experience was that hard work always pays off, even though it may be
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<p>*any input is really appreciated</p>