<p>Title: Sacred
Question: Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you</p>
<p>I discovered a fishs jawbone on the beach in the thin and middling breaths of July, my first in living memory. The heat rose in rivulets that pierced the sky, itself a blank expanse with neither beginning nor end.
It was one of the first things I saw: pale white to the point of translucence and stark against the gray lake sand. Crescent shaped and thin, its surface pooled with intermittent wells which must have once housed teeth. Still, there was no sense that this thing, this deceptively biological treasure from the polluted depths of Lake Michigan, had once been as alive and present as I was then.
I was just beginning to emerge from that sleepy, insular place of a childs mind. I possessed, for example, a vague notion that my mother was pregnant. I also understood that this day was her birthday and that, at the age of four, it was still a day for me as much as it was for her.
In six months I would miraculously be provided with a sibling, which I already imagined as the greatest gift I would ever receive. In nearly a year from that day I had enhanced my limited vocabulary to encompass such scientific terms as cancerous, chemotherapy and, most trippingly, Neuroblastoma. I would come to know them each intimately, with ease and a childish insensitivity to the thin margins that separate life from death.
The day my sister contracted one of the most detrimental forms of pediatric cancer was the day my familys collective life ended. Ignorance on my part was simply no longer an option, but neither was the selfish luxury of extensive grief. At the age of five I felt my parents pain: I felt the nearness of my nuclear family as it pressed in around me along with the presence of various extended relatives, suddenly amassed in tragedy. Most prominently I felt the certainty of life. My sister, my gift, was going to live.
Slowly, together, we began to reform. To this day my sister copes with the crippling effects of a disease, which in the curing, destroys twice as much. She may never walk normally again. It is not a challenge I would wish on anyone, and yet it is one that has shaped me and my family in innumerable ways. From it I learned the forgiving simplicity of thanks.
The day my father insisted I take martial arts lessons instead of ballet his only explanation was, For Talya. You should do it because she never will. And she was there, watching, the day I earned my black belt. In later years I found myself listening, ensconced in the shadow of a doorway as she stumbled through her first Mozart concerto on our tinny upright. I bore witness to the first handwritten composition and to the lead role in the school play.
The knowledge of life as sacrosanct didnt come in a moment of transcendence. It is an understanding that flows in and out of my consciousness, inhabiting such small demonstrations of my gift at its core.</p>
<p>First of all I think it’s a mistake to publish your essay on an open internet forum. Someone else could choose to claim it as their own or you might run afoul of plagiarism scanners; not to mention the fact that you’re revealing personal facts about someone other than yourself.</p>
<p>Second, you may want to consider getting right into the issue of your sister’s health and talk more about how it affected you directly.</p>
<p>There’s little to no chance that someone is going to steal this because it is a situation which applies only to me, therefore worthless to somebody else. Also, it’s supposed to be a metaphor for my understanding of life and death…read more carefully, kay thanks.</p>
<p>very nice essay, but take it down. a teacher’s input is more valueable than a stranger’s. I went to my english teacher from last year, my english teacher this year and my science teacher who was an english major to look at my essay to get different input from people I trust.</p>
<p>My apologies. Obviously I assumed you wanted a critique of your essay not blind support and a pat on the head. In the future I recommend that you state right up front that you only want positive feedback.</p>
<p>As for reading ‘more carefully’, believe me I “got it” that you were talking about life and death. The problem was that I had to slog through three paragraphs of over-wrought, ham-handed imagery before you started to answer the essay question. Instead of wasting 1/3 of your essay on describing a hot Lake Michigan day, why not tell us how the disease made you feel? Were you afraid for your sister? Were you afraid you might contract Neuroblastoma? Did you ever feel angry that you couldn’t be a “normal” family? Were you ever resentful that your father apparently guilt tripped you into doing things in the name of your ailing sister? </p>
<p>As truly tragic as your sister’s disease is, the point of the essay is to learn about you. As it exists now, your essay is little more than greeting card aphorisms written by a “silently suffering martyr”. If I was distracted by your language there’s certainly a possibility that others will be as well. Here’s hoping you get a more patient reader at BC.</p>
<p>It kinda looks like you thesaurused a bunch of words. I don’t know if you actually did that, but if it comes off unnatural like that, chances are there is a problem with the language. You definitely use some good vocabulary, but I think it may have gone a bit overboard. Overall, good job, but I would also consider taking this down. Someone could steal it whether it only applies to you or not.</p>
<p>I stopped reading after the third par. Besides your ability to use the thesaurus in MS-Word, this essay gave me no reason to read further. No 18-year old writes/speaks like this, nor thinks like this at the age of four (yeah, I went back and read the 4th par to see if it gets any better). Besides the wording, the paragraphs have no transition statements, at least the three that I read.</p>
<p>Vince is correct. Get to the point much faster. And note a college is accepting an 18-year old. How did your experiences 14 years ago make you the person you are today? How are you different than any other teenager who had family disease. (Breast cancer is rather common, and I’d guess 10-15% of all college applicants’ mothers have gone through treatment – including my two kids, but don’t write about it; they write about themselves instead. Do you think that your 'understanding" of life and death is any different than theirs?)</p>
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<p>Are you sure you want to end with this?</p>
<p>I apologize for coming off harsh, but your reaction to Vince makes it appear that you aren’t seriously seeking advice.</p>
<p>I have thought about commenting, on the essay but decided not to. The reason? Very simple, I am not a University Admissions officer. Every Admissions office has its own bias when it comes to what makes an essay tick. College counselors at your school that have been Admissions officer in the past are the best people to judge your essay.</p>
<p>I was once told by a College counselor that when she was an admissions officer, an essay she really liked about horse riding was summarily dismissed by a fellow admissions office as being elitist! In the end no admission for the equestrian kid.</p>
<p>I am, I just didn’t feel he gave me anything to work with. This is genuinely how I write and speak and it is also genuinely how I feel. I can’t dumb myself down, but equestrian is kind of an elitist topic to begin with, kind of like when wealthy children write about going to expensive summer camps. I just wanted to show that I am an adult who can appreciate opportunity whenever and wherever it is afforded…</p>
<p>Also, If you have ever known anyone who has experienced terminal illness, let alone someone in your immediate family who was left permanently disabled by it, you would know how this changed my life. I’m not going to be apologetic for the fact that one event shaped my entire outlook.</p>
<p>I highly recommend Harry Bauld’s book on college essays, as well as a book by Michelle Hernandez, a former Dartmouth admissions officer. They are inexpensive and available on amazon.</p>
<p>Dear 121feldmanir : True story. When I read your essay, I prepared a four paragraph response earlier this week. In fact, I was going to be the first responder. After I reread the content and my response, I realized that I was reacting to the content itself and not the structure of your essay.</p>
<p>vinceh’s response from 9:08am today is actually brilliant and captured the problem : the topic is serious and heartfelt, but you need to slog through three paragraphs to get to the formative material. bluebayou provided serious food for thought while EmmaOakley is correct in the assertion that some of the language seems forced in order to appear “poetic” in the presentation.</p>
<p>As for posting your essay, please do remember that application essays are now used as source material for searches against the internet to locate duplications - or worse, out right plagiarism.</p>
<p>Regarding your post at 5:20pm, no one is asking you to be apologetic that this was a life changing event. I am personally sure that it was - you have convinced us of your passion here. We are trying to help you sharpen the essay itself. </p>
<p>Let me ask you something. If you really want to capture a reader’s attention, wouldn’t a better opening teaser be “I am not going to be apologetic about how much my sibling’s near-death cancer impacted me”. From there, you talk about how you personally achieved your successes based on that drive - and then explain how you will make Boston College better as a result.</p>
<p>In closing, your topic is not wrong - it is something for which you demonstrate great passion. Skip the prose in your essay - get to the emotion, the learning, and how it shaped you. You can do this - we just need the messaging sharpened.</p>
<p>I appreciate you giving it the time. I guess I’m just frustrated because It’s been through so many revisions/seen so many red pens/been exposed to so many eyes. Peer, teacher, parent, whatever, they’ve all seen it…oy</p>