A college essay that I like

     Written by Deanna E. Barkett

     When I was younger, I used to silently pray that I was nothing but like my father. He was so serious. His brow was always knit. My grandmother could not remember a time when my father had done anything wrong. He was too perfect. I felt timid and self-conscious around him.
     My father was always offering advice by which he swore. Although they may have been ancient proverbs or old adages, they were always "Daddy originals" to me.
     "When you're prepared, you'll never be scared," he would tell me when I was up late studying for an evil chemistry test.
     "Haste makes waste," was his rejoinder when I would bring home a math exam littered with careless mistakes.
     "When you lose an hour in the morning, you search for it the rest of the day," is the Chinese proverb I learned on more than one Saturday morning of a weekend filled with homework.
     "Live by foresight, learn from hindsight," he would say when I was younger and only old enough to relate "fore" and "hind" to the legs of a horse These saying interminably buzzed in my ear at times when, as I got older, I wanted to scream: "I know, Dad! You've only been telling me these things since I was two years old!"
     I never elevated my father to sage status. I always recognized that he wanted me to do my best, but his advice lacked a loving tone. Indeed, at times his became a voice of nagging monotony.
     As I have grown older, however, I have realized that Dad-in his own way-has these many years been trying to guide me. The denouement of my fathers' motivational speeches occurred this summer. I was away at summer school for two months in Massachusetts. It was the longest separation I have had from my parents.
     Communication with my family consisted of more e-mails messages than telephone conversations. My father corresponded with me more than anyone else. He always returned my e-mails promptly and tried in hi sown silly way ("love ya!" which is not at all like my father) to make me laugh. So much so, I was reminded of another of his sayings, "When you lose your sense of humor, you lose your mind."
     Near the end of summer school, Mom told me that Dad had printed all of my e-mails and was planning to take them to the family reunion. "You have pleased him so much, Dee. He is so proud of you and loves you so much," she told me. I had an epiphany: In my messages, Dad was reading about preparation and patience, time management and foresight. I made him laugh a lot too. Then I remembered another of his sayings, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." And I cried.

     The reason that I chose this essay is because I like the narrative style of this essay. Using short paragraphs, the author made this essay easily readable, which will definitely help the admission officer who must be overwhelmed by thousands of other essays to read. Also, the author successfully combined enough amount of humor into the essay to make it fun and still kept enough tension to make the reader focused. With all these things  combined and with, not unique, but still effective and moving story, this essays makes you feel like meeting the writer.

Impression on the 3rd chapter of Outliers

     To the question about my intellect, I will answer that I am not smart enough to change the world but smart enough to do what I want to do, and I am content about it. 
     Christopher Langan, the major figure discussed in this chapter, is a person with extremely high IQ. His IQ is far beyond the level of simply smart. He is 'the' genius. His intellectual ability is amazing in normal view. He can learn difficult concepts without spending much time and solve extremely difficult logic questions, which normal people can't even try to solve, by just a few seconds of thinking. You must doubt your memory that you just never heard his name before in any kind of academic journals, because you unconsciously have in your mind that geniuses are able to succeed in scholastic achievement. Truth is that, unlike your belief, Langan didn't succeed in any field of natural or social science, engineering, or humanities. Wasn't he smart enough? Yes, he is smart. The problem was that what mattered to his success was not his intelligence. 
     Do you know Yu Geun Song? He is a 16 years old prodigy who has a great talent in physics and engineering. He is a famous figure in Korea because from his early age he was shown in TV as Korea's new genius who might change Korean future and, if possible, the future of the world. Skipping general Korean curriculum, he was admitted to an university and is pursuing his career. Many Korean Parents envy his intelligence and want their children to have it because they believed that such great intellect can actually guarantee their children's success.  
     To those who envy the genius, I want to give a question that is worthy of thinking. "Who, do you think, is the most successful person in the world?" There might be many answer choices to this question, but only few would answer that some of the geniuses like those mentioned above. The answers might be Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Oprah Winfrey, not Christopher Langan. Why does this happen? Why can't extremely high intellect guarantee success? Because IQ is not what decides one's success. Say you run in U.S president election. Which ability would you like to have: high IQ or nice oration skill? The answer seems so evident; you will choose a nice oration skill. But why? Because you know that high IQ will not be of help to you in election. This grand simple example tells us a valuable lesson: IQ is just a number. If you are not to figure out the complicated truth of nature, you don't need 150+ IQ. 
      So, then, what do you need instead of high IQ. I would say it's confidence. If you feel confident about yourself and have enough power to pursue your own personal goal and preference, you can actually succeed in whatever field you work in, because not your IQ, but your other talent will lead you to the top position in that field. Be satisfied with your IQ, then your life will be much happier than that of  geniuses. 

The last time I cried

     Tear is salvation. It cleanses your soul from deep inside. Shedding tear is the most truthful form of expressing sympathy, so it doesn’t happen when you aren’t truly moved. In today’s romance movies, tears are used to manipulate the emotion of audience because they can effectively emphasize the emotional appeal of a particular scene. Due to the excessive usage of tears, however, I found myself worn out of sympathy to the tears in movies; they no longer moved me. The most powerful emotional expression of all became the most prosaic one. This is why I never imagined I could cry while watching a romance movie.

     However, this movie, I love you-그대를 사랑합니다, was far different from any other movies I’ve ever watched. The explicit difference was the content of the movie. It was about love between two old couples who find their true meaning of life from their lovers. However, the more important difference was the way it delivered the emotion of love. The romance of this movie was neither powerful nor passionate. Expressions of love were reserved and not sensational. However, their love was true. The 4 characters in the movie loved their partner truly, and even the irreversible age, incurable disease, and irremovable history weren’t of any problem to them. They embraced everything within their love.

      At the end of the movie, when the letter of a husband whose wife has cancer along with Alzheimer’s disease is read by the protagonist, I couldn’t stop shedding tears. The truthfulness of his statements about his emotion penetrated directly into my mind and my sympathy to him grew rapidly. “I chose to be with my wife until the end.” This simple phrase can tell everything about him. He decided to die with her wife in his house because he couldn’t dare to live alone, because of his guilt that he didn’t know that a malignant disease was growing in the body of his wife, his lifelong partner. They were holding their hands tight when they were dying, not to be separated. Watching this whole scene, I found that love, no matter how passionate and beautiful, is as itself worth everything. It was no longer a commonplace sympathy to a tragic story that moved me. I was inside the characters and feeling what they were feeling. Their tears were mine, their anger was mine, and their happiness became mine. The tear that I shed at the end of the movie was the most truthful tear, the tear of salvation, the cleansing tear that made me again sympathetic toward love. 

Not see, but feel (New Edition)

Essay #1

 “I’m sorry teacher, but I think I need to take some rest. There’s a problem in my eyes; I feel dizzy.”

Every single time I took the violin lessons during the middle school life, I had to stop playing in the middle of a piece of music and ask permission from my violin teacher to let my eyes rest, since sudden yet long lasting pain came from my eyes, which was otherwise irremovable. As I concentrated more into my violin and the music that came out of it-the process of presenting myself through the music, my eyes resisted to my brain’s control more fiercely and gave me an unbearable nausea by randomly overlapping the entire image I saw through my eyes. Upon the scores of the right side suddenly appeared the scores of left side, even upside down or twisted 50 degrees, making what I saw totally mixed up. My brain, so surprisingly, came up with a strong talent in making surreal and messy images even better than artists such as Rene Magritte could. This bizarre phenomenon of 3D image converting always interrupted the practice. The recurrent symptom of incurable lightheadedness broke into the gradual progression of falling into innermost part of my true ego. 

That I had to quit practicing playing violin every single time because of the unceasing pain made me consider giving up playing violin. Even the medicine and treatments prescribed by the doctor, which were the only hope I could look for, virtually had no effect; it appeared that at the dead end of my effort was the only choice of giving up-until I kept opening my eyes

“May I ask you a single question?”

“Yes, you may.”

“Can you tell us the reason why you close your eyes when you play the violin? It’s quite unique.”

“Hmm…. It’s because I don’t have to see what I do; I can just feel it.”

Walking out of the audition room, I totally forgot how I performed the notes I’d practiced for more than 2 months. My regret was no longer about the quality of music nor about the admission; it was solely about the bold, inexplicably bizarre answer that smeared out from my mouth. At the bus of returning home, I kept thinking how I could have responded better to that question. Several possible answers that could have made me look better, pondering about them made me feel even more desolate. However, it was very true that those other fancy sounding answers weren’t true. The only genuine answer to that question was to say that “I can just feel it.”

Disability in sensual organs makes people with such problem elevate their sensitivity of other organs so that they could compensate one loss. To me, the problem in my eyes, which had to be kept closed, worked just the same way. I can’t play a whole piece of music with my eyes opened. The death sentence of my visual sense was just the same as the loss of gustatory sense of a cook. The disability stood right middle in the road of my life as if it were being pretentious about its pressing magnitude. Even with passionate love toward my violin, such disability took much of my will power away. However, facing the dead end, I found a long and rough yet the only possible detour: Closing my eyes. This was the only way possible.

From the moment of enlightenment was the whole process of practice changed. The pieces of paper with millions of scores no longer showed up on my music-stand; they rather remained in the bookshelf for indirect reference only. The very first and the most essential process was no longer seeing but listening. I listened to the music I longed to play until I could totally memorize it. It took a lot of time to memorize every single note, but it was all worth it. After full memorization, then I started to practice. With my eyes firmly closed, I spent 10 seconds before starting the music so that I could feel my soul reaching my fingers. Then, my fingers, my body, my brain, and my soul, all of them united, never stopped until the music ended and I opened my eye. “I don’t have to see it; I can just feel it.” 

Commissioned essay ver.2 (yet unfinished)

“Why aren’t you being loud today? It’s so weird. You’re not like yourself.”

This awkward question-which, in many cases, should ask about the reason for loudness-comes out from my friends whenever I don’t speak anything even for a short period of time. So used to my loudness, they can’t bear the absence of chattering when my mouth is firmly closed. No matter how bad being talkative can be seen, Chatterbox is who I truly am. I am the only, the special “The Chatterbox” of this school. 

To a 17-year-old boy, integrating into a society where there is nobody you know is a difficult task, and it gets even more difficult when all the other people in that society knew each other. The very first day of KMLA, the totally new place, was full of both curiosity and fear. 500 kilometers away from my home where I lived for 16 years, I was like a baby starting to know his surroundings. Everything, every person around me was so novel and intriguing. Just as it brought up the curiosity, so it produced a serious fear, the fear about things that were new. Unable to totally trust anyone, I can’t express my true self to even my roommates.

Not courageous, I did nothing but playing mobile games while taking the lectures of pre-education period. Day after day I was losing chances to get into KMLA society of 15^th wave. It was highly expected that I just remained as quiet and shy student. However, chances came suddenly. A very small but loud girl came to the seat in front of mine to talk to the person sitting next to me, who was my roommate. The girl, whose name was Bori, introduced herself to me, about whom she knew nothing at all.

 “Hi! What’s your name?”

 “……”

 “My name is Bori Lee. What about you?”

I couldn’t answer to her question at that moment because I didn’t know how to respond. She, I viewed, was very straightforward and truthful in expressing herself. Looking at her, I regained the very important value I lost in fear.

“Hi, Bori! I’m Chanjung. It’s really nice to meet you. I’m the roommate of Changhoon(the boy who sat next to me).”

The whole chattering I had with her shifted my life in KMLA as the Chatterbox who got rid of the veil of mind surrounding his true figure disclosed himself.





It will keep going on....

Short Journal on Outliers: Chapter 1

     I was born in 12th of August. I was one of the shortest kids when I first entered elementary school. It was possible that I felt timid because of my relatively small size compared to that of others. But I felt different. Though I thought that it would be nice if I were taller and bigger, I was proud of being small. I was more fascinated by the fact that I would grow.


     The very first chapter of Outliers focuses on how the birth month, which seems to have no relationship with success, actually affected the success of many athletes and students just because the due date for the enrollment to a team or an advanced education program was set at an arbitrary time. The surprising fact was that, unlike public opinion, people who were born in the month right before the month of the due date were more likely to be admitted than others. Because they had more time to grow and study, they had this seemingly unfair advantage.


    When I first read this chapter, I was also very surprised just as others would. It even seemed so unfair that the system needs to change. However, as I contemplated more on this issue. I found the statistics misleading. Yes, it is out of question that the statistics itself is true. However, the conclusion the writer deduced from it was true but not true. The suitable month of birth actually helped some luckily born people as far as success was concerned; however, it was to be questioned whether the really talented people were hindered by the system. 


     The obvious conclusion, I found, was No. Lionel Messi of FC Barcelona, who is undoubtedly one of the best soccer players throughout the history, is not as tall or big as other players are. He is rather one of the shortest guys among soccer players. If you base your logic on Malcom Gladwell's conclusion, Lionel Messi must fall into a victim of the system. But he didn't. Even with such disadvantage, he achieved more things than any of his competitors did. From this example we can deduce that true talent is not hindered by arbitrary rules of system if the talented has enough will.




     

Assignment #1 Commissioned Essay

"The Chatterbox" of KMLA

              

“Why aren’t you being loud today? It’s so weird.”

This awkward question-which, in many cases, should ask about the reason for loudness-comes out from my friends whenever I don’t speak for even a short time. So used to my loudness, they can’t bear the absence of garrulousness when my mouth is firmly closed. This is who I am. I am “The Chatterbox” of this school. Though a little derogatory in its superficial sense, it is the best definition of my characteristics because it possesses the meaning of gregariousness and affability simultaneously.

When I first entered KMLA, I thought I was not able to make any friend. I felt that way just because I wasn’t brave enough and was simply too shy to go closer by myself to other students around me. Unlike many of 15^th wavers who knew each other before the entrance, I had no idea who others were; therefore I had to make friends from those whom I had no information or prior knowledge about, a process which required vast amount of courage and boldness. However, unlike my negative expectation, my outgoing characteristic was proven to be helpful in making friends and at least made the situation better than the worst of being an outcast. Though not able to get closer first, whenever other students came closer to me, I responded with the largest enthusiasm and gratitude that I could show. Furthermore, I tried to not possess any prejudice or doubt against them; rather, I showed my true self to them. And very fortunately, for many of other 15^th wavers liked my garrulous yet gregarious characteristic, I was able to assimilate into KMLA society and became “The chatterbox” of 15^th wavers. 

In KMLA, trouble between friends is unavoidable. From minor conflict to uncontrollable fight, small dispute between friends sometimes enlarges into a serious problem in KMLA because all the students have to live with others virtually all the time and thus cannot avoid confronting the other side of conflict. More importantly, constantly presenting proximity between people in conflict exacerbates the situation by accumulating misunderstanding. Considering the general atmosphere of the school, I am very satisfied and proud that I don’t have any social problem with any of my friends in the school. One of my primary worries I had when I entered the school was that I might face a bitter feud with other students because of my in some ways annoying vociferousness. However, my garrulous characteristic became rather a benefit to me as I acquired the title as “the Chatterbox.” People around me started to treat me as an easy person to whom they can talk about both serious and light matters. Such affability gave me many friends not because it worked as itself a charm but rather because it made them think that they could discuss whatever they want to with me, and I found it pretty nice to be an “easy” friend.

I don’t think I would get rid of my nickname “Chatterbox” in a near future, for I get fitter into the definition day by day. It doesn’t mean that I speak more or get louder; I became more open and more malleable as time passes by and as I grow up. Living as a Chatterbox, I found how important it is to love the people around me and try to show the true self to them so that they can and I can understand who I truly am and what it is to be a member in a society.