ESSAYS ON SPORTS
AND ACTIVITIES

 

Whitney Lee
College: Princeton University

MY CHOICE

I could have died in that cave.

We were spelunking, and when we reached the halfway mark there was a crevasse bordering a dimly lit walkway and I slipped…only to be rescued by Nate and Naiji at the last second. It was the second week of cadre leadership training, the part spent in the wilderness. Cadre is a group of rising juniors and seniors, who are chosen by the AFJROTC instructors to lead the cadet corps for the following year. It is a time-tested military school tradition for the rising group of upperclassmen to practice their leadership abilities in a pressure cooker. There were mosquitoes, spiders and other insects…still it was nice. By the second week of cadre camp, I had been pulled, pushed and lifted by most of the guys in my squadron, in an attempt to finish our challenges: Nate and Naiji in the cave, Grant and Temple in the obstacle course and Jake for physical training. Roasting in the August sun, hoisting and being hoisted by my classmates, was a grueling experience, and I often considered giving up. Every day I had to reaffirm to myself that it was an honor to have been chosen and that I was there by my choice, not just cadre camp, but also the school.

I often reflected on my decision to come to military school, to leave behind my friends and family for a boarding school over two hundred miles away. For me, it was a welcome opportunity to begin anew, south of the Mason-Dixon line. At first, I was both excited and overwhelmed, and it was amazing being able to experience new things and put myself out there. Some things were unique to the military program, such as drill and saber team, and I had to learn to balance my extracurriculars with my schoolwork, juggling journalism and tennis with speech and debate. My days were packed, but they were no match for the nights of studying and managing the girls on my hallway, as their flight sergeant. The best part about being at my school was that I was able to try anything I wanted even when the odds were stacked against me. I loved the fact that whatever I wanted to try, I had the support of the faculty and coaching staff.

Being at R-MA has taught me many things and most were learned outside the classroom. I have learned patience by living in the dorms, perseverance by participating in sports and discipline by being a cadre member. In moments when I am exhausted and want to give up, I take comfort in the fact that R-MA has given me an amazing community of people, staff and students, in whom I can trust. As I climbed out of the cave, thankful to have emerged unharmed, I realized that my choice had been the right one.

COMMENT:

This is one of the most complete college essays I’ve ever read. She takes something intriguing about her application profile: the fact that she went to military school, and spins it into an essay that highlights her leadership skills while simultaneously explaining her decision to attend the school, a question that would surely have come up during interviews or at least been in the back of the minds of the admissions officers. This essay has suspense, heartfelt emotion and a touch of nostalgia for the years of high school that will soon be in her past. The writer shows maturity, in being able to look back at her high school experience and recognize the amazing opportunities that she has been afforded, and it shows the writer as a grateful person, as she thanks the teachers and coaches who helped make the experience worthwhile. (AMH)

Shelley Ledray Bornkamp
College: Washington State University

EVERY LITTLE GIRL’S DREAM

Every little girl’s dream is to become a dancer. It was my dream as well.

At the age of seven I entered the dance world, and attended beginning ballet class every Saturday morning for one brief hour at Susan Cooper’s School of the Dance in Mt. Vernon for little dancers. I remember how I felt at my first lesson, excited and scared, with visions of myself in the distant future as a prima ballerina in a glorious, spangled pink tutu. I continued to dance, advancing slowly by levels each year, adding then multiplying the hours that I invested at the barre. By age ten, I was dancing six hours a week, while my peers back at school were playing basketball and discussing boys. At lunch, everyone talked about what happened at practice and whether the cool boy in the math class would come to the birthday party. I lived and breathed ballet; their interests and mine no longer converged. As I increased my hours spent in the studio, my feeling of being an outcast increased proportionally.

Dancing was not a hobby to me, it became what I lived for. I did not care that I had little in common with my classmates; I enjoyed my isolation because the feeling that I had at my first ballet class was still inside me. I was going to be a professional dancer, and I would do anything to achieve that goal. That tutu changed to sweaty rehearsal clothes, leg warmers, and tattered toe shoes. Ballet lessons four times a week. The basement room in my parents’ house became my practice room and the Ping-Pong table was a substitute barre. In addition to my winter work, I attended intensive summer dance camps for three years, concentrated dance training taught by professional dancers from all over the world. These summer programs not only improved my dancing skills, but also they gave me a sense of self-discipline and independence that has stayed with me to the present.

The climax of my dancing career was my acceptance to the Pacific Northwest Ballet Summer School in 1983. I was thirteen with braces and stars in my eyes. I can still remember the day I auditioned, the first time that I had been surrounded by serious competition. I thought that there was no chance of me being accepted. When the letter of acceptance came in the mail, I was shocked, amazed, and very pleased because I was accepted to the “elite” ballet school in Washington State. My success gave me the incentive to work even harder at my hometown ballet school; I knew I had to push myself in order for me to be able to compete with the other dancers.

The day finally arrived for me to go to Seattle where I would begin the six best weeks of my life. I learned new skills, a fierce independence, and continuous discipline. My urge to be a ballerina grew stronger and stronger. At the end of the six weeks, students were evaluated on their performances and a select few were offered the chance to continue through the year. I was so proud to be chosen. The decision was not hard, although I realized that I had to leave home, parents, and friends for a time. I knew that was the price I was going to pay if I really wanted to dance.

I moved to my new home with Debra Hadly, one of the principal ballerinas in the company. I began my new regime: three hours a day, six days a week, at the same time attending a demanding all-girls Catholic School, Holy Name Academy. It was a special year, not only for me but also for the Pacific Northwest Ballet, because the company worked feverishly to produce the world premiere performance of Maurice Sendak’s The Nutcracker Suite, a re-creation of story, costumes, scenery, sets, and choreography. Without much confidence I attended the auditions, hoping for a part, any part. My wish was granted with two fairly demanding roles: part of the Calvary and a Scrim Mouse. I was ecstatic! Even though I would have to spend every weekend in Seattle for rehearsals, I did not care. I lived and breathed the exciting world of professional ballet. Opening night was sheer magic. Exhausted but delirious with accomplishment, I did my homework in backstage corners in between rehearsals.

Unfortunately, the Nutcracker also marked the beginning of my failure as a dancer. I began to worry more about my competition than about my self-improvement. My body began to take the shape of a normal teenager rather than that of a dancer. I found that I really missed being connected with my mother, a crucial part of a young teenage girl’s life. By mid-April I was depressed; I had put on fifteen pounds and dancing no longer made me happy. It was time for me to do some serious evaluating of my situation. I met with the head of the Ballet School and with my mother many times, and I finally concluded that it was time to give up dance. This was the hardest decision of my life. It led to a good year of finding a “new” Shelley. I felt that someone had taken away the past fourteen years of my life and I had to start all over. It was an extremely hard time for me, but with the encouraging support of my mother and close friends, I pulled out of it, I worked hard to become a normal teenaged girl. I learned to like football games, parties, cheerleading, friends, and good times. I also learned to like myself once more.

When I look back at what I had to go through and what I gave up to become a dancer and then at my decision to leave the world of ballet, I wonder how I made it through my fifteenth year. I have come out of that black period of my life with a great many personal strengths. I have talents other than dancing; I am a strong, independent, and caring person. I have met with depression and have turned my failure into success. Somewhere in the back corner of my head lives a pink tutu, but my years as a dancer are behind me and I am ready to take on new challenges.

COMMENT:

Well-organized and generally well-written essay about a very important part of the writer’s life. The subsequent emotional conflict it created for her and the traumatic decision she had to make reveals her strength of character and her eagerness to look forward. I think the same story could have been told in fewer words, however, and perhaps this is its only weakness. (NA)

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Shelley relates a profoundly significant personal story, somewhat tragic given the way she portrays her long journey into dance, and then the way it became so suddenly rerouted. I feel that I’d like to hear more about the outcome, having heard so much about the lead-in. She pokes a lot into the last two paragraphs and well, but less profoundly. However, it is an excellent essay and very interesting tale. (MAH)

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A decent, well-done, but workmanlike essay; it is ultimately dull. She would have done better to describe the dancing and its impact than to recount in lockstep chronology her autobiography in dance. This is straight history without images. (TH)

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The “decision” essay is often very predictable. This one is no exception. While the outcome was not in doubt, Shelley is able to portray a dedicated dancer, and we get a good picture of Shelley’s personality. The dedication is evident as is the pain of the decision, but also is the knowledge that it was the correct one. (JLM)

Terrance Darnell Moore
College: Harvard University

As students go through high school, too often they are absorbed in too many superfluous things and lose the value of giving back to their school and community. I contrarily believe that my high school career should be exemplified by excellent academics as well as my commitment to my school and community. An aspect of this belief that I am very much proud of along with my exceptional academic performance is my participation in Boy Scouts, where after eight years I accomplished the rank of Eagle Scout. This event is a milestone in my life because of the values it has taught me, the virtue of service it has instilled in me, and the foundation it has laid.

During my experience in scouting, not only have I been taught many practical things but many valuable life lessons as well. Scouting has shaped me as a leader and young man. It has taught me responsibility, leadership, and how to work with others. It has also instilled numerous values including hard work, which is evident in my achieving Eagle Scout. I have learned through many experiences how to work with a culturally diverse group of people and still strive to achieve a common goal. But along with my own enlightening, I am most proud of the privilege to communicate with and guide younger scouts to achieving what I have and to grow into men.

Service is an essential asset to scouting which is constantly stressed. Through the virtue of service, I have always been connected to my community. I have led and completed many service projects and activities including the building of two bookshelves for my church Sunday school department. Along with this project I feel I have served also by my example. Many children have told me how they look up to me and my actions. I feel that this kind of positive influence is a much needed and irreplaceable contribution to today’s society. My service is especially important to me because I believe that one’s accomplishments mean little if no one else is inspired to do the same by their actions.

The reason I have stayed so persistent with scouting throughout the years is in my belief that it would lay a strong foundation for my future. The rank of Eagle Scout marks the achieving of a milestone that few are able to reach because of its many obstacles. These obstacles that I have surpassed will contribute to my future endeavors. My exposure to the diversity that scouting introduced has equipped me with the ability to lead and communicate in and with a team and will be essential in later successes in life. This exposure has also helped me to gain a broader understanding of the world around me and my place in it. The list of scouting’s contributions to me is endless but has surely laid a bridge to future prosperity in my life.

Many people see me as a talented and gifted young man of many dimensions that has a great influence on my peers. This young man is derived from many factors, so choosing one most important only partially tells my story. But of these factors, scouting would most likely be one I hold especially important in my extracurricular background. This factor has such importance because of the values it has taught me, the virtue of service it has instilled in me, and the foundation it has laid. As a prospective student at Harvard College, it would be detrimental to miss out on a young man of my caliber as a contributing member of your institution.

COMMENT:

This essay, although formulaic, is well written, descriptive and illustrates passion for Boy Scouts. The essay is also unapologetic as a brag fest of the student’s achievements. While this does convey confidence, it adds to the length and once this is stripped away, there is little substance. I would suggest this writer knock out anything that is already elsewhere in the application: academics, community contribution, description of scouting and its value. It is a given that scouting stands on service; detailing this takes valuable time from this young fellow’s stint in the driver’s seat. College admissions people are smart; they know what scouting involves and do not require a dissertation. Please, dear boy, tell me more about your Eagle Scout project. The writer states children look up to him, but I need an example. He touts being gifted and a great influence, but again an example is missing. The student concludes with the challenge to take a stand and admit him, yet the broad generalized perspective offers nothing to the soul of this young man. Unfortunately the yes factor is missing. (BLB)

Joseph Libson
College: Princeton University

At the risk of transforming this application into a tract on the wonders of wrestling, I nonetheless wish to discuss my recent vacation through hell. Hell, by the way, is not located under the earth. No, the current residence of Satan is Edinboro, Pennsylvania. Hell opens for two weeks every summer and the operators slap on the snappy title “J. Robinson’s Intensive Wrestling Camp.” The daily routine for this camp is so rigorous that graduation with honors consists of receiving a black shirt with the daily schedule inscribed on the back in mute testament to the existence of this habitation of fallen angels. Each camp session the dropout/casualty rate varies from 25 to 50% (even with an avowed policy of no refunds). I cannot describe the total impact of this place but I can sure as J. Robinson’s Intensive Wrestling Camp try.

We wake at 6 A.M. every morning. If your group is lucky you lift weights, if not you run. This exercise is not a typical long-distance endurance run, but rather sadistic combinations of endurance and sprint running. One section, deceptively called the ‘Buddy Carry,’ involved running with a partner about my size. The instructor ran us down a long country road about three miles from camp. At his signal, I carried my partner on my back at as fast a pace as I could muster. At the halfway mark we switched and he carried me. The indescribable pain that accompanied this operation almost broke me. But, of course, the “almost” is what the camp is all about. The run lasted an hour and a half. We showered, ate breakfast, and crawled back to our rooms to catch a nap before Technique Session. Technique Session is a two-hour “easy” practice that is as difficult as normal wrestling practice at most schools. After the first session I was convinced that I didn’t want to see the “hard” practice. I was right. Hard practice is live wrestling for two hours. I have never been so tired as after a hard practice. But, it made the technique sessions seem really easy. I never got used to hard practice. Every day panic would creep into my thoughts. “This is never going to end. I can’t keep this up any longer.” Invariably I survived the practice and staggered to shower and dinner, after which came the fourth session. This was almost a repeat of the morning session in difficulty but was preceded by a motivational talk, during which most of us practiced sleeping standing up. Days passed until finally, on the schedule board, in the section devoted to the Hard Practice drills, appeared the words

RED FLAG DAY

Curious, how such innocuous words could inspire such terror. The rumors of Red Flag Day had been circulating throughout the camp since day two. When it finally arrived, dread filled every wrestler’s heart. One hour and forty minutes of nonstop wrestling was assigned, with no breaks or instruction periods where a wrestler might catch his breath. If regular hard practice was difficult, this was surely impossible. But, we did it, most of us, and we did it twice. On the last day, before the end of the camp session we had another Red Flag Day; this one was two hours long. To graduate with honors a wrestler had to have 500 points. Everyone in camp started with 800 points, which could be lost through bad room checks, discipline problems, or not working hard enough during practice. Two minuses and one plus were awarded during every practice. I have never worked so hard for anything as the one plus I received in one practice during that hellish two weeks. The last exercise of the camp was a twelve-mile run. It was unbelievably easy, for we all knew that after the run IT WAS ALL OVER AND WE COULD GO HOME.

In spite of my sarcasm, it is probably obvious that the camp was one of the greatest experiences in my life. It taught me that there are very few limits to what achievement a person can attain. Having the coach yell, “Sprint, dammit!” when all that you desperately desire to do is fall down and sleep right there not only conditions your body, it also disciplines your mind. This mental strength has enabled me to work harder at anything that I try. One cannot endure an experience like that camp and not be the better for it. I am no exception.

COMMENT:

This essay is good because, although the experience occurred at a wrestling camp, the writer avoids the trap of letting wrestling become the focus of the essay, but just barely. What this piece does do is show that the writer can endure physical hardship and pain without quitting, over a relatively long period of time. In that sense the scope of this essay is a bit one-dimensional. (AST)

Gregory Lippman
College: Princeton University

There is a certain smell when you walk into a gymnasium, a hermetic, airless kind of smell. A smell of leather, of shellacked parquet floors, of old sweat. I like that smell.

Basketball has always been for me a lot more than simply a release at the end of the day or just another of the seasonal sports. The intensity, the speed, the sudden drama inherent to basketball is matched by few other games. I love basketball not because I am especially good at it; on the contrary, I fit perfectly the stereotype of the “preppie” player: no speed, no leaping ability, no quickness. I have a decent outside shot, and that has carried me to the varsity level at a high school with an unremarkable basketball tradition.

But basketball has that ineffable quality about it, that certain thing which I find it hard to pin down but which keeps me coming back to the court day after day. Maybe it’s the power and the dexterity all wrapped up into one, or perhaps that feeling of fluidity and constant motion as the ball flits from player to player in a kind of schoolyard ballet. And ballet is not an inappropriate word here, because basketball is the most graceful of all competitive sports. I know of no sight more graceful than a man, weaving and bobbing through defenders, to suddenly, forcefully, move toward the basket, arm outstretched, and lay the ball gently in the hoop.

But those are just the surface attractions. The real allure of the game comes for me in other ways. It comes in that tight pull of pride when you and a teammate combine a bit of passing fancy to set up an easy score, slapping five gently as you run back downcourt to set up on defense. It comes from the eye contact across the court, to know instinctively and instantly what your teammate is going to do. When that unspoken communication exists, the game suddenly becomes easy. The joining of wills, the confluence of desire between myself and my teammates is the most satisfying part of basketball. In all the other sports I have played, nowhere is the sense of team so immediate and blunt. The absence of it is felt just as strongly as its presence. And when it, that indescribable it, is there, the rush of emotion is unmatchable. Teamwork can be talked about, diagrammed, planned out ad infinitum, but it never comes that way. But that slap on the hand and that look across a crowded court, that’s where it comes from and that’s where I go looking for it every time I step on to the court.

COMMENT:

It isn’t terribly unlike the hundreds of “sports essays” a committee is prone to receive, but in its own way, this one is fresh and interesting. The writer avoids cliché and, particularly with its use of the term “schoolyard ballet,” expresses his feelings toward the game in creative, original fashion. The essay is concise, and well organized. It combines some measure of formality with an equal measure of informality—making the piece entirely appropriate for a college essay, but also highly readable. Not profound, but nonetheless effective. (RJO)

John C. Martin
College: Yale University

WHAT ACTIVITY OR INTEREST HAS MEANT THE MOST TO YOU? WHY?

I have never been able to convince my nine-year-old sister to change television channels. As a fourth-year debater, supposedly gifted in the arts of persuasion, this knowledge should be disturbing to me. Yet, for some strange reason, it isn’t. While I’ve tried very hard to discover the reason for my relaxed attitude toward this problem, until very recently I couldn’t find a solid answer. At first I thought my attitude might indicate a lack of the “killer instinct” that is necessary to any good high school debater, for my interest in Lincoln-Douglas debate has never been limited to the numbers in my won and loss columns. Yet, I would be the first to admit that I have found victory to be thrilling and defeat to be agonizing. Furthermore, when the issue at hand deals not with the propositions of great value found in “Philosophies of Hate Should Be Suppressed for the Good of Society” but rather with the more mundane concerns presented in “Dallas Reruns Should be Suppressed in Favor of Monday Night Football,” a lack of enthusiasm might well be expected.

Perhaps my problems with my sister arise from a lack of logical argument, for part of my enjoyment of debate stems from my passion for rational discussions of the political and moral philosophies of such giants as Emmanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill. In contrast to this, my arguments with my sister are anything but logical, calling on “family rules” that are often invented on the spot and are, more often than not, unfairly biased toward the inventing party. Fortunately, while debate is theoretically based on rational argument, it has also provided me with experience in dealing with such irrationality. Take, for instance, the resolution “It is Better to be a Dissatisifed Socrates than a Satisfied Pig” in which many debaters ignored all possibility of metaphor and argued the value of a somewhat unhappy, and very dead Greek philosopher versus that of a happy, well-fed quadruped rolling in the mud. Other examples lie in the hypotheticals in which Mr. T goes back in time to defeat Socrates in a boxing match, thus proving that “Conflict Limits Humanity,” or in debates where crucial arguments rest on quotes from “The Saurus” or “Ibid.” With rational argument thus eliminated as a possibility, it seemed as if my quest for an explanation might be utterly fruitless.

As is the case with most debaters, I had failed to find a reason for my lack of disappointment because I had forgotten something elemental. In this case, I had forgotten what was, in many ways, the most important difference between Lincoln-Douglas debate and arguments over television rights. As a Lincoln-Douglas debater, I am constantly reminded of the fact that I am a member of a team. The process of developing arguments is such that it cannot possibly be done by one person alone. Brainstorming sessions and constant informal arguing are a necessary precondition to the proper preparation of a resolution. It is here where I have played my most important and most enjoyable role. While my personal won/loss record may not be as fantastic as those racked up by many of my fellow debaters, the record of those team arguments that I have played a critical part in developing is a source of great personal pride. While it is always satisfying to know that I have done well myself, perhaps my most satisfying moments as a member of the Hearn (Regis’ pet name for its speech and debate society) have been those in which I have seen a fellow Hearn member who had turned to me for help in debate use my help to go on and win a state championship or other major award. While I may be personally hurt by debate decisions that didn’t go my way, the satisfaction of being a crucial part of a winning team more than makes up for such disappointments. Thus, it was no surprise that I was not terribly upset by losing battles over television control with my youngest sister. After all, I have two other sisters, and, as a team, we’re unstoppable.

COMMENT:

Although this essay is well written and cleverly presented and, at the same time, does give the reader some insight into this young man’s thoughts and feelings, I feel he spends an inordinate amount of time describing a couple of personal interests or views. (TG)

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A very readable approach to what could have been a dull subject. The last paragraph is especially good because Martin finally emerges from behind debate topics and even hints at a little sense of humor. (JWM)

Kimberly I. McCarthy
College: Brown University

“Here she comes again. Just like always—running in, breathless, a stack of books in her arms. She throws the books on top of me and glides onto my bench, screeching to a stop in its center. Then she gently lays her hands in position on my keys, and sighs. ‘I really shouldn’t be here,’ she tells me, ‘I have chem to study, and a creative writing paper, and eighty lines of Latin, and a watercolor, and…’ She begins to play. It’s my favorite, the Moonlight Sonata. It always reminds me of her—gentle and loving yet deeply passionate. Her fingers press tenderly at first as if my keys were ivory eggshells and ebony velvet. Then she is swept up in the tide of her own emotions and begins to play louder, stronger, faster, her fingers working furiously, faster and faster and then over. She caresses my keyboard, eyes closed, then gasps. ‘Oh, God! It’s 3:15! I’m going to be late to karate!’ She jumps up and runs out the door without so much as a glance over her shoulder—but that’s all right. She’ll be here tomorrow. Maybe not at the same time, maybe with different books. But she’ll be here. She told me—no matter how hard the courses get, no matter how smothering the work, no matter how little time, she could never give me up. It’s wonderful to be loved.”

COMMENT:

Enchanting essay which reveals the writer’s flair. It says a great deal about the student in very few, simply stated, and carefully chosen phrases. Wish there were more essays like this one to read. It demonstrates that “less” can be excellent. (NA)

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I like the brevity; the whimsy; and it’s a good glimpse of who this person is and what her interests and commitments are. (MAH)

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This piece is beautiful. There is a wonderful expression to it, and yet it is short and to the point. One gets a good picture of the girl and her emotions. (JLM)

Mitch S. Neuger
College: Yale University

CYCLING

I came home from school, inhaled two bagels and a glass of orange juice, squirmed into a new pair of black Lycra chamois-lined cycling shorts, pumped up my tires, and carried my bike down the front steps to the driveway. Some days I rode south, up a hill, across a street and onto the bike path. Or north, past the polo field, along the river. I sang to myself, watched the odometer, and daydreamed, looking up occasionally at the trees whose leaves were just losing their summer green. In an hour and a half I returned home and recorded my distance and average speed on a homemade chart on my wall.

I began this routine in September of my junior year, a week after returning from my summer job as a bicycle mechanic in Massachusetts. I was training, preparing myself for an organized ten-week cross-country bike trip that was eight months away.

Miles accumulated: fifty…one hundred…two hundred fifty…six hundred. When the oak trees hung on to their very last leaves, I pedaled inside on a stationary bicycle and joined the weight-lifting club at school. Six days a week I exercised until one day in December I lost all feeling in my big toe. The numbness persisted; I loosened my toe straps; I stopped exercising; I called my pediatrician, a sports physiologist, and a neurosurgeon; I wrote to Bicycling magazine. A new pair of cycling shoes solved the problem. On a mild day in February, I took my new shoes for a ride in the park. I returned shortly with a flat tire and deflated spirits.

Miles paid off in more pain and frustration. In April I developed Osgood-Schlatter’s disease, a tendonitis of the knees. Again I consulted unconcerned doctors and gym teachers, read health encyclopedias and Prevention magazine, rested, stretched, and took vitamins. Suddenly it was spring. In just two months I would be riding “seventy to one hundred miles a day” on a bicycle loaded with fifty pounds of clothing, food, and camping gear.

I told none of my classmates what I was doing. I was afraid of impressing them with my ambitious plans and then not following through because of knee trouble or illness. And would anyone believe that I, a scrawny kid, a failed soccer player, was going to pedal my bike four thousand three hundred miles? I scarcely believed it myself; I was sure that some injury, some accident, would render months of training useless.

As the dogwoods bloomed, my enthusiasm wilted. The road was so familiar, progress was barely noticeable, and I had run out of daydreams. My new bicycle, which had arrived completely unassembled in three boxes, made a new noise every day. One day an older cyclist caught up to me; he wanted to coast and chat. I told him after a while that I was training to ride across America. “That’ll take some serious riding,” he said with a laugh. The bike tour brochure gave two prerequisites for this trip: “You must be in great shape” and “You must love to bicycle!” When I had first read about the trip over a year before, I believed I could do it. But now I wondered if I were meeting some personal challenge or just inflicting punishment upon myself.

And then one magic day in gym class, I was trying desperately to do a handstand when my teacher said, “Hey, your legs are getting bigger, you been working out or something?” On the road that afternoon, I met a young couple who was riding from California to Maine. They told me that the TransAmerica Trails, which I would be riding, were wonderful. Every hill I climbed on the way home that day was an Appalachian pass; every headwind was a Colorado breeze. I rode up my driveway exhausted, but restless and excited.

During the first week of summer, I began to pack—among other things, a flashlight, five new tee-shirts, and my cycling shorts, now tattered, the chamois dry and cracked. I disappeared every morning with my bike and a snack and reappeared late afternoon, sweaty and mosquito-bitten. I constantly wondered about the other kids who signed up for the trip, if they were somehow more prepared and confident.

On the morning before my trip, my thigh muscle tightened up. My doctor was on vacation; the library was closed; I decided that I’d be back home within the week. But by midnight, my bicycle was sealed in a cardboard box along with an empty journal and a bottle of vitamins. I lay on my bed, exhausted but not sleepy, thinking about tomorrow as I had for many months past.

COMMENT:

The “cyclist” in this essay presents us with a picture of himself that is rich in the details of his physical and emotional struggle to meet his commitment to the summer trip. In the process his qualities of determination (sticking it out to the end), resourcefulness (building his own bike), and “heart” are made completely apparent to the reader in subtle but powerful ways. This essay was written by a keen observer of the world he lives in, and a person whose self-awareness is very high. (AST)

Christine Richardson
College: Princeton University

My dance lessons began in the seventh grade. It was not watching a performance at the Kennedy Center that prompted me to beg for the lessons; instead it was watching a friend’s ballet class one evening that sparked my enthusiasm. I wanted to fly through the air with pink satin pointe shoes on my feet.

When doing my homework, I often look at a poster that hangs on the wall across the room from my desk. Six pairs of dance shoes line the bottom of the gray poster and in the middle, written in large white letters, reads, “Dance is the only art wherein we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made.”

I believe in that quote. In dance there are no formulas like those in my physics book, formulas that always work. Dance is not the pointe shoes, or the jazz shoes, or the steps; it comes from within the dancer. It is her style, her interpretation that makes a dancer unique.

I now take ballet, jazz, and tap lessons, and each type of dance has many similar steps; but the steps are merely the technique; dance is the overall result of style. I can do a jeté, and depending on my execution, the music, or my mood, I can look like a sea nymph or a sports car. Shakespeare said, “All the world is a stage…,” but when I perform, the stage becomes all the world. The costumes, makeup, lights, and choreography draw the audience’s attention to the dancer; for three or thirty minutes, the dance is the entire world. There is only one chance to do the steps I want to. I know that I have no second opportunity.

Dance is also discipline. Serious dancing means having to make all my muscles work while looking poised and graceful. Dancing can be exhausting and frustrating as sweat drips and muscles cramp. However, at other times, I actually feel the sensation of flying, flying through the air with the pink satin pointe shoes or the black leather jazz shoes. Dance, to me, is flying without wings.

COMMENT:

The author does not tell—but shows—her love for dance. She is wise to avoid using the essay to list her accomplishments in dance, and instead illustrates for us how she feels about it. In this way, we gain some insight into her personality, as opposed to receiving a list of accomplishments. The essay is concise, thoughtful, and entertaining. Well done.

Alexander P. Nyren
College: Harvard University

Gripping the rungs of the rope-and-stick ladder tightly, I had managed to get halfway up the tree before the panic set in. I looked up: twenty feet to go. I decided to wait where I was for a bit to slow my racing mind and heartbeat.

“So much for having conquered my fear of heights,” I joked. “Is this thing insured?”

This was the notorious high ropes course on the Dalton senior Peer Leadership retreat. After applying, twenty-two members of the junior class are selected to become Peer Leaders. These students are paired and given a group of freshmen the following fall. We help them to adjust to life in high school, advising them on sex, drugs, academics, or whatever else comes up. The first rite of Leadership training was a three-day session in late August. (The freshmen would come on a similar trip with us a week later, which we would run ourselves.) The purposes of this retreat were to familiarize us with the activities, engage us in discussion, help us bond as a group, and of course, have fun.

Climbing around on wires forty feet in the air, I discovered, was not my idea of fun. I finished ascending the ladder and stepped onto the first wire. The “facilitators” called this section of the course the “Multi-vines.” I called it torture. Some misguided neuron forced me to look down. I began to scream like a banshee. I was, shall we say, uncomfortable. I refused to step away, grasping the security of the tree instead. I did not doubt my ability to complete the course, but I did not wish to endure the pain, struggle, and potential embarrassment along the way. I screamed that I wanted to come down, right then, no joke.

But what would happen if I climbed back down? What would my fellow Peer Leaders think of me? How could I ask the freshmen to push themselves if I was not willing to test my own limits? How could I respect myself after such a debacle? I felt a surge of helplessness beginning to overcome me. While I am used to challenging myself intellectually, I usually try to avoid unfamiliar physical tasks. I am not the “Outward Bound” sort of person; my mother says that this is genetic. It was not the exertion that was bothering me, either; years of soccer practice and working out had conditioned me. I was nervous about testing my physical skills in an area in which I had essentially no experience. But I would not let myself back down that ladder.

I forged ahead onto the wire, yelling with all of my might, wondering if I was mentally prepared for this task. “The Vines” was only the first of the course’s eight parts! Someone down below yelled at me to stop thinking and walk, and I realized that I was almost to the next tree. This was not half bad! I even started to enjoy myself. Completing the last stage, the zip line, was perhaps the most relieving and exhilarating moment of my life.

Except, that is, for putting my feet back on the ground. I was elated, and not just because I was out of that horribly chafing harness, or because I was no longer what seemed to be two seconds away from a bloody demise. I was proud. Having challenged myself would enable me to encourage the freshmen honestly when they confronted their own personal challenges.

More than that, I knew that the self-assurance this experience (ordeal?) had helped me to develop would be indispensable when I faced the challenges of the future. The ropes course was a seemingly insurmountable problem which was indeed solvable when broken into several sections. While my academic life in high school has been quite challenging, I know that it cannot compare with college, graduate school, or (gasp!) real life. Completing the ropes course in relative style was an important personal accomplishment; never before had I felt so unsure of my capabilities, never again would I feel quite so panicked. I now have confidence in my ability not only to do what comes easily to me, but to overcome what might seem to be the most ornery of obstacles. Outward Bound here I come! Yeah, right.

COMMENT:

The problem here is that most of the essay deals with the negatives of the experience that the writer is describing rather than the positives. The writer challenged himself; he succeeded in finishing the course. He had never felt so uncertain of his abilities before. OK, but—somehow I’m not convinced that this experience will necessarily translate into any other area of his life. It feels like an essay I’ve read often before. (MR)

Dani Ruran
College: Amherst College

Rose was a physically unattractive and overweight elderly spinster. She lived with her sister in a little white house, where she often gave music lessons to young violinists. The zenith of her day was when she sat in her living room on her black piano bench, leaned over the violin in her lap, and instructed a child on the essence of bowing and fingering.

I was six years old when I first met Rose, and I had just moved to West Hartford. I had begun playing the violin several months prior to our move and was very concerned about changing teachers. My first instructor was young, beautiful, kind, and patient. She was impressed by my love of music and with my willingness to practice; I had looked forward to our weekly lessons.

My mother searched for a replacement for June. She was told that Rose Kleman was the best teacher of violin for young children and made an appointment for me to meet her.

Rose arranged to interview me at her home. I took one look at this new and very different-looking teacher and promptly forgot all the music I had learned. I could not play a single note. But, she began to talk to me about music, asked me to call her “Rose,” and brought me into one of the most heart-warming and productive relationships of my life.

As the weeks passed and we became better acquainted, Rose added dimension to the life of my family. With both sets of grandparents living too far away for frequent contact, she became another grandmother to my sisters and me and another mother to my parents.

The experience she gained through working with so many young children enabled her to give me guidelines for life while she helped me to develop as a violinist. She told me that I was “almost grown up now” and that I was to carry my own violin up the steps to her fourth-floor studio. When I had difficulty facing a performance, she would say, “You will do it,” and I did. She taught me how to budget my time and how to balance my daily activities. Because of her rare dedication and true caring, she often gave me lessons at her home, for which she did not charge.

One Yom Kippur, the concertmaster of the Hartford Symphony (who would soon become my teacher) played Max Bruch’s Kol Nidre in our synagogue. I remember sitting near Rose and looking up at her face in sheer delight, sharing two common joys with her—the spiritual mysteries of religious and musical fulfillment.

During the week of my tenth birthday, my family visited relatives in Philadelphia. On our third day there, we were awakened in the early morning by a telephone call. I saw my mother’s eyes redden as she held the phone to her ear. When she hung up, she broke the news slowly. Rose had died unexpectedly. Soon, my whole family was in tears. I remember the distraught look on my little sister’s face and the puzzled look on my cousin’s as he peeked through the open door, trying to find out what had happened.

I vowed to remember Rose, her teachings and her kindness. I began taking lessons with my new teacher, the concertmaster, and I continue to work hard at the violin. Whenever I enter a competition, I think of Rose before playing my first note. I hear her saying, “You will do it,” and I do. And silently, I dedicate my performance to her.

I would like to spend another evening with Rose. I would like to see the joy on her face as she learned that she had helped me to grow, both musically and personally, and heard how I was continuing what she had begun.

COMMENT:

Obviously, this is written with sincere, heartfelt emotion, but although it reveals that the writer is sensitive and musically inclined, we don’t learn much about the writer herein. (Perhaps that was not specifically the purpose of this essay question.) At any rate, it is a highly personalized response, and a description of a unique relationship. I do wish the writer had employed additional specific instances of anecdotes that would have further illustrated what this lovely person Rose was like. The one example of the concert at the synagogue is effective—but seems isolated in the essay. I’d call this a B+ essay that with one or two more specific recollections could become an “A.” (RJO)

Peter Urkowitz
College: University of Chicago

I wanted to draw in the rain. It was not really rain, just a lot of people in raincoats trying to make each other believe that they were hiding from the sky for a reason. Well, maybe it was a bit wet, but no one seemed to notice that there were many more people on the streets than there would have been had it really been raining. Real rain would drown out the city with noise, wash pigeons into drains, sweep cats straight into the river, tip over garbage cans and float the trash away, and leave red marks wherever raindrops hit bare skin. This barely had distinguishable drops; there seemed a strange continuity to this rain, as if it were an extraordinarily dense mist, or a very airy river that was flowing out of the sky and oozing onto the ground rather than, as real rain would have done, attacking the ground like a machine gun.

It wasn’t even dark. When I came out of the school building I had to blink my eyes, to let them adjust, in exactly the same way that I had almost every day since school had begun. I had my umbrella open, of course. Everybody had their umbrellas open. Everybody was wearing a raincoat, too. Everybody was hunched forward, shoulders tensed. None of them cast a shadow, but that was their own fault. Of course, I had no shadow either. Was I afraid of embarrassment?

Yet this light, from a sun ineffectively hidden by translucent clouds, was interesting in a way. When figures are equally lit from all directions, they become weird creatures, gray and colorless without becoming less lively. It was the illusion of rain that made them less lively. I thought about how I could draw objects without shading, how to describe contours on a uniformly gray mass.

Looking up, I was distracted by the view down the street. If drawing objects without details seemed hard, how much harder would infinite details be? As I looked down the street, and the facades of buildings formed unreproduceable angles toward the horizon, and the windows were placed in patterns so complex that it would take days to sort them out, and every iron railing on the steps was a work of art, I felt like crying.

I was quiet. Around me the city was unhurried but loud, except at moments when it grew silent and rushed past me. I felt the urge to paint the whole scene with one explosive stroke of a brush. It was clear before me, a true vision calling me out to be expressed, by the sudden release of boundless energy this vision could be communicated to the world. I didn’t move. The energy was there, perhaps, but only if it were controlled and manipulated could this vision, if it were such, be expressed. That was the root of real power. The people I know who are powerful intellects all have this ability: to sustain their energy over extended periods, directing it to their purpose.

Only at rare moments do I feel intellectually powerful enough to sustain an artistic vision over the time that it takes to actually execute a drawing. Only when the execution itself requires a further insight can I remain in the state of excitement that the original idea provokes. As I improve in skill I find that this further insight happens more and more often, for I am more able to approach each line, each brush stroke, with renewed spontaneity.

In writing, this spontaneity is easier to achieve, for it is more obviously necessary. Because any piece of writing is broken up into paragraphs and sentences, and by the progression of an action or an idea, it is impossible to conceptualize the entirety of a piece before it is physically written. At the very least, word and syntax choices must be made as they arise. At best, a work grows in the writing to be better than its conception. And because each word presents a new challenge, I often feel the excitement which prompts me to begin drawing only after I begin writing. As I write I build momentum and confidence, until I reach a peak of concentration. All barriers to achievement seem to melt before me, and words and ideas come forth.

It is at these moments that I feel intellectually and artistically powerful: subtle and sophisticated, exercising immense control over a boundless force.

COMMENT:

This is a stunning piece for several reasons. First, the opening encloses the reader in a world where there are no points of reference. This world of shadowless rain and misty sun, of raincoats and tears and of questions and explanations, is evocative and disorienting, but gripping. Second, had he ended with the usual poem I’m not sure the essay would work, but he comments on it, revealing his ability to step back from the artistic piece and be reflective. (PT)