I have my essay read only by the teachers whom I really trust, but they gave conflicting opinions on it. (Some say it’s too risky.) I’ve already sent it to the schools I apply early, but I still wanna know how general people would think about it. So please rate it and, if you’d like to, criticize it.
“And so it was that later—” an 11-year-old boy was listening to A Whiter Shade of Pale on his mp3 player while waiting for his parents. They had just gone into the doctor’s office to hear about the condition of the boy, who’d had a cold for a month. Exhausted by all the examinations he’d taken, the boy lay on the long chair right by the door, closed his eyes, and concentrated on the beautiful Hammond-organ sound. In the office, the doctor sat in a chair and began talking to the parents. As the doctor showed the results of the examinations, the mother’s “face, at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale.”
Lying on the bed, the boy with a Hickman catheter was listening to Bohemian Rhapsody. “I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all.” Then came the poignant guitar solo. As the solo ended, his doctor came into the room. His mother politely greeted the doctor, but the boy didn’t even look at her. The doctor faintly smiled at the boy and turned to his mother. “So that anticancer drug is the last one, and we’ll begin the bone marrow transplant on the 27th.” The doctor began to talk about the things that could happen during the transplant, but the boy didn’t care. “Nothing really matters to me.” When she finished informing the boy’s mother of the transplant, the doctor looked at the boy and said, “Stop being so dreary; it’s all going to be done soon.” As she left the room, the song came to an end. “Anyway the wind blows.”
After three hours of banging on the drums, the boy got tired, so he put his earbuds in and played Time on his phone. “Kicking around on a piece of ground,” he started walking home with his eyes settled on the ground. The boy abruptly realized that the next day was his 15th birthday, and that he’d done nothing but bang on the drums in the years after the transplant.“And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.” Suddenly, he felt like he’d wasted those years, and he was “one day closer to death.” He wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. When this wave of feeling was all gone, he was “home, home again.”
When I finally finished all the assignments, it was already eleven at night. I still had to look at the AP Euro notes to be prepared for the test, but I wanted to clear my head a bit. I opened a new tab, went on Youtube, and played Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. “Some things in life are bad/ They can really make you mad/ Other things just make you swear and curse.” All the days I’d suffered in the hospital flickered in my memory. “When you’re chewing on life’s gristle/ Don’t grumble, give a whistle” — it was a shame that I couldn’t whistle — “and this’ll help things turn out for the best, and— always look on the bright side of life.” The worries that had been pressing my shoulders started to be alleviated; I sang along with my head swinging like a pendulum, “always look on the bright side of life.”
I still remember the night I was listening to the album 1 by the Beatles. I was very depressed for some reason, so I just sat in the chair in my room and listened to the music. I didn’t understand the lyrics because I was only 8 years old, but the melodies, especially of Ticket to Ride, Penny Lane, and Something, comforted me. That was the first night music touched me, and ever since that night, it has helped me endure stressful times. I know that music will never desert me, and that it will sustain me any hardships that are to come.
The quoted words except "Stop being so dreary… " and “So that anticancer drug… ” are lyrics. I italicized them, but College Confidential doesn’t let me italicize them here.
So how do you think?