WELCOME TO WORDS INC.

Each student brings a unique spin and personality stamp to the creative essay process: a Twitter fiend who can only juggle 140 characters at a time, an imminent novelist whose words leap like a gaselle across the screen, a mathematician who shrugged off words for numbers in fourth grade, or the prolific school reporter who only needs an editor to gape over the shoulder. As such, there is not one way to create an essay. However, the commonality of effective admission essays is they tell a deeply personal story with vivid imagery and simplicity. The rule “show, don’t tell” presides. These essays won a place in the college of choice.

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COMMON APP PROMPT: 

Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.

 

     Off the coast of Big Sur, two tattered flags flap in the gusty winds atop a sand dune.  If you notice the direction those flags blow, you can determine how the surf zone will react to the wind’s force and whether the undercurrent will pull you left or right by those fluttering wings, you can glimpse the impact zone,  measure rip tides, or simply nail the sweet spot for surfing. I didn’t discover my passion for marine science by turning pages in a classroom but by standing in the face of an alluring, tempestuous million-gallon walk-through.

I

     set sail into alternative learning at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. As an intern,  I led tour groups through a sea odyssey filled with star-studded crabs, who dressed in seaweed camouflage and strutted a sandy catwalk. I narrated in front of Octopuses who turned red to disappear into the deep blue sea and taught people how to figure the weeks a jellyfish had lived.  Watch a child’s face pressed against the aquarium glass, awed by the sea spectacle. You can’t find that in the school library.

 

     The ocean was my substitute diving teacher: a harsh disciplinarian who imparted lessons of survival.  There are 32 ways to die and 50 ways to live when deep-sea diving.  Equalize often or your eardrums pop and blood spews everywhere;  breathe continually so your lungs don’t implode; blow bubbles in your mask to keep it clear. 

 

     The sea was also my wise sage, who illuminated a decision while diving in Hawaii. I felt the swishing water between my fingers while swimming with dolphins and diving to a coral reef with hundreds of shimmering creatures.  Everywhere I looked were distinct species I'd never seen. Mesmerized, I floated and became one with the tie-dyed fish dancing around me. That moment reaffirmed my passion for the sea, when I knew marine biology would guide the rest of my life, an awakening brought on by nature, outside the classroom, along a pebbled beach, and beyond two flapping flags on a sand dune

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HARVARD UNIVERSITY PROMPTS

COMMON APP ESSAY
PROMPT: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal
growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
While most people fear drowning when confronted with raging rivers, there are those who dare
to swim to the other shore. I vividly recall the fearless children from a remote village in Ghana,
who intrepidly crossed River Tordzi to reach the school on the opposite bank. Carrying baskets
of books and clothes on their heads, the boys waded through tumultuous waters, tiny ones riding
piggyback on the larger kids. After coming ashore, they sprinted the last few kilometers to reach
a shanty school, where they eagerly sat down at chalky white tables. There, my father sat forty
years ago. Like those indomitable boys who fought the whitecaps of the jungle river, he entered a
rural school and graduated, before coming to America to enlist in the U.S. Navy. That stirring
vision ignited a fire within me.
The river at Agordoe Village that plagued my father’s childhood still haunted him when he
arrived in America. One summer night, a phone call shattered his peace: Kofi, my cousin, had
fallen ill from crossing the polluted water every day. Like all the other children who braved the
muddy waters, shirtless and wearing flip flops, mosquitoes swarmed and caused an infection.
Kofi lived; nevertheless, his ordeal sparked a determination in me to save the children of
Agordoe from a similar fate. On June 4, 2020, I founded Volta Community Development (VCD)
to build a bridge.
As I embarked on this mission, the challenge was like scaling Mount Everest solo, with no team
or resources to transform the lives of people living almost 6,000 miles away. While I looked for
allies to kickstart my vision of the overpass, my friends mocked my
dreams. "Mark, you're only 15!," they taunted, "Why are you even thinking about this?" Forcing
a smile, I thought, "I'm sure they'll be the last ones to donate to my crowdfunding campaign."
Constructing a footbridge in Agordoe Village seemed like a pipe dream. There was no money, no
crew, and no means of publicizing the project. Offering me a lifeline, my father introduced me to
the Council of Ewe Associations of North America (CEANA). Awakening their souls, I showed
them a video of kids braving the wild rapids of Ghana. Pitching the idea of building a crossing,
we crafted a blueprint together. With a flourish, they signed the agreement and gave the green
light.
While sprinting to my friends to boast of my win, something stopped me: remembering how they
laughed at my dream once. However, I also recalled something vaster: the children who crossed
the raging river every day to reach school, who were an inspiration for the bridge in the first
place. Taking a risk, I shared the story of Tsavayna Bridge with my friends. As a result, they
joined this time. Illuminated by education, we evolved into the river children.
And one day, the bridge became a vision. The children, clad in their vivid orange uniforms,
bathed in sunlight, each ray, a child with a future. As they raced across the new bridge, their
laughter was crystal clear, a rich symphony of sounds that bounced off the raging river below
them.
In hindsight, building a bridge was more than just pouring concrete. It wasn't just connecting
two places; rather, it was making connections between people. I worked beside a team of
friends, tasked with ascending a mountain, and despite the steep incline and harsh conditions, we
nevertheless kept encouraging and communicating
with each other. With each step forward, I feel more empowered to overcome life's
challenges. The project gave a purpose for my future: to build metaphorical bridges
wherever I travel.

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HARVARD-FIVE PROMPTS (200 words each)

PROMPT 1: Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body.
How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard?
The only music in the gym was the squeaking of shoes on the basketball court, and a hundred
egos vying for the 2023 Lieutenant Governor of Georgia Boys State prize. The payoff was
shaking hands with the President in the Rose Garden. Egotists, we all raced for it.
Then I met Raymond. He was a 6’3” giraffe wearing an oversized hoodie that swallowed him up.
We swiftly succumbed to conversation, and Raymond confessed his fear of speaking and running
for public office. At that moment, I knew what my campaign had to offer: a sense of belonging
and respect to those who felt silenced – Black Lives Matter groups, Me Too activists, LGBTQ
community, and disabled persons. I vowed that their stories would be venerated in my
campaigns, which consequently won me the election.
I delivered my victory speech from a modest stage, speaking on behalf of each marginalized
group. When I finished, I knew that everyone felt they had a place.
 

PROMPT 2: Briefly describe an intellectual experience that was important to you.
I felt like I was about to vacuum an electrical wire when I had to argue against my beliefs once.
Standing on my high school debate stage, fighting against safe spaces, I half-heartedly argued
that safe spaces can pamper people by disregarding the real world. I pounded the podium with
my words, "You must confront hate speech directly." Surprisingly, people began to cheer - I had
won the debate!
But the real challenge came in the Q&A portion. Nadia, a Muslim student, accused me of
epistemic injustice. I disagreed but stayed poised. Instead, I posed my strongest defense: "Would
you be standing here today if people like Dr. King, Gandhi, and Cesar Chavez decided to stay in
a safe room and not speak out about oppression and discrimination?" In that instance, I was
speaking as much to the audience as to myself, pulling out the blind spots to the argument I had
rejected: if we exist in a safe room, the world will never change.
Finally, my internal battlefield was silent because I knew two sides of an argument could exist in
a person without anyone losing. And then I exhaled.
 

PROMPT 3: Briefly describe any of your extracurricular activities, employment experience,
travel, or family
My life is a tessellating jigsaw puzzle, with every experience, another piece slots into place,
gradually revealing the true picture of who I am. One piece of the puzzle was my pilgrimage to
Ghana, which connected me to my ancestral roots. Stepping foot on the same ground as my
mother, I experienced the roadside market where she sold fish, witnessed families who lived in
mud-brick dwellings, and observed women who balanced buckets of water on their heads to
survive in a developing nation. It humbled me.
Consequently, Ghana connected me to another puzzle tile back home: the International Club,
which sparked cultural conversations with peers. Similarly, that piece connected me to Harvard’s
Pre-College program, where I explored solutions to third-world economies. Click! With this new
knowledge, I created the first Financial Literacy Club (FLC) at my school to teach money
management. As President of FLC, I transcended my comfort zone to lead.
Everything I encountered has shaped who I am as I ponder Harvard. Looking over the
near-complete puzzle, I hear a hiss as the glue sets, a sharp tap to set the extracurricular piece,
and a sigh as I put the last edge in place, gratified by my work.
 

PROMPT 4: How do you hope to use your Harvard education in the future?
As I stood among Wall Street's towering structures of steel and cement, I was overwhelmed by
the thunderous sound of a thousand conversations, cell phones ringing, papers shuffling, and
computers clicking. While investors annihilated each other to race to the top, an intense sense of
solitude weighed down on me. My thoughts returned to my neighbor Mr. Chan, and how he had
moved from China to build his small business, only to have it torn apart in weeks due to
Covid-19. The pandemic allowed Fortune 500 companies like Amazon, with their fast shipping
capability, to dominate the market and topple mom-and-pop stores. Freezing this moment, I
would allocate the money that was lost from fraud in the Paycheck Protection program to small
businesses. With that funneling, Mr. Chan would be able to expand into a major grocery chain.
To alleviate the rampant inequality, I will major in economics at Harvard University to make
changes on behalf of small businesses. I plan to bridge the gap between Wall Street and Main
Street by creating forums where consultants, stockbrokers, and bankers speak to small businesses
and kickstart their financial planning. As these people slowly approach the Charging Bull on
Wall Street, I will become a service leader for their cause.
 

PROMPT 5: Top 3 things your roommates might like to know about you.
A mental image of my future flatmates' pops into my head. Suddenly, someone twists open a
Pepsi bottle that crackles. Glancing at my phone, the time is half-past six. The eerie silence of a
hissing air conditioner permeates the room, so I break the silence by introducing myself to my
newfound roommates and disclosing my top three virtues.
Determination is the engine that drives my life forward. As President of my high school
Financial Literacy Club, attaining a sponsor was about as easy as threading a needle through a
haystack. However, like a panther, I fixed my gaze on the target until it was mine.
Another quality is loyalty, driven by my soccer team. When Ali, the captain of our team, faced
heckling by our opponents, I played the role of an inspirational catalyst, infusing him with the
belief in the undying loyalty of our team.
Multiculturalism defines my third power. Growing up, I was surrounded by neighborhood
parties, where trays of Bengali rice and dumplings were passed around as the hum of Afrobeats
filled the air. Consequently, I listened intently to the rich tapestry of global cultures.
These three diverse qualities will define our tenure, infusing it with a profound sense of purpose

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EMORY UNIVERSITY PROMPT

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PROMPT: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

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     Even at Wimbledon, you can hear the chirps and pops underneath the babble of thousands of people which echoes all around the main stadium. Except this wasn’t Wimbledon; this was my match back home in Atlanta, GA filled with those familiar sounds. My racquet sprang off a tennis ball with a thudding pop. The score was 30 love. My opponent, Shorts, the obnoxious grunt of the tennis club, was 5’2” and trimmed in an oversized t-shirt, baggy shorts, high socks up to the knee, and neon green tennis shoes. Sweaty beads of frustration stung my eyes in the parched sun as he punched perfect serves. I misaligned every swing; my sponge ball landed just inches off the baseline. Worse, Shorts was an unbearable liar, disputing my every call on his ball to justify his win. With each furious step, my madness grew until I lost balance and watched the ball skate away from my grasp. He pummeled me. In my loss, I launched a ball missile into the trees. Like a full hot horse unbridled, my anger strangled my racquet and blinded me. I planned to change that.

 

     To quote Clint Eastwood, “We boil at different degrees.” One degree of my boiling was driving with my father one day while he scolded me like a disappointed owner towards a disobedient dog. Like playing a tennis game, Dad kick-served a lecture about a late assignment that affected my grades. I lost focus on the road ahead. Blurred by a quiet tornado brewing within, I defended my character with a backhanded hit, using every excuse I could give. Dad grand slammed me with the rules of becoming a successful human being. Slipping on my forehand, I realized the missing assignment languished in a back folder. Game, set, match! However, instead of slamming my racquet against the ground, I slowed my breath, controlled my ego, and used imagery to control my emotions: the vivid red rocks and skyscraper-like mountains of Utah. A calm washed over me.

 

     As my new attitude improved my tennis game and volleys with dad, it was time to work on my game in the classroom. The setting was ninth-grade biology. Our teacher was more interested in divulging her personal dramas to her students than helping them understand the mysteries of the atomic composition. She’d go nuclear if interrupted during one of her Oprah moments. I feared her anger issues would sink my GPA and college future. Then I remembered the tactic I learned in turning my tennis game around. Don't blame her. Take control of your own game.  Stay inside YOUR HEAD and work your plan. Consequently, I became my tutor, spending hours online learning DNA experiments and pouring over more college-level content. When my anger returned, I simply took refuge in images again: sleepy, blue, luminescent clouds drifting overhead.   

 

     Tennis star John McEnroe is the epitome of a man’s raging ego and crippling anger. Despite his success, McEnroe lost respect and accumulated astronomical fines because of his outbursts. No one will forget John McEnroe's mercurial temperament when he bellowed, “you cannot be serious” throughout the stadium. Contrast that behavior with the late Arthur Ashe who rose from the depths of poverty to become one of tennis’s greatest players seldom letting his ego get in the way. Perhaps John McEnroe should have lost his ego and listened to the soothing sounds of jazz, chilled in an effervescent bubble bath, or meditated on blades of grass breathing in the ground before stepping on the court.   

     

     Now when I return to hear the familiar pops and chirps of a tennis ball bouncing off the court, I let go of my ego, slow my breath, and picture the red rocks in Utah again. I serve the ball high knowing no matter where it lands, I can meet the outcome with grace and breathe in the peaceful respite in the wind.

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INDIANA UNIVERSITY PROMPT

What academic areas are you interested in exploring in college?  

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     Standing at 1700 feet above Wall Street, I once watched people draped in suits and top hats with paper flying out of briefcases, sprinting from the stock exchange and circling the bronze bull who decried the success or failure of businesses. Amidst the chaos, I want to interpret the ticker tape scrolling on the stock brokerage walls and make sense of it for society. I measure what I am interested in college by how it helps humanity outside of a school book’s pages. Majoring in finance at Indiana University would open the doors to the trading floor of life. By absorbing the knowledge of Indiana’s world-class professors, my mind will develop into the global consciousness of business. Corporate finance classes will help me analyze markets and advise companies to make wise choices with their money. By studying the legalities of business and risk management, I can create security in the portfolio of the American family. By leaping into organizational management classes, I can invent new management paradigms in corporate America. By studying at Indiana, I will no longer stand 1700 feet above Wall Street; I will create an original path around the bronze bull to help the world.

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NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PROMPT
Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. 

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     Stretching out my arm, I grab the golden baton. ¨The words, "Drive! Drive! Drive!¨ push me through the steps of the race. Then, silence. My world slows. I only hear my footsteps pounding on the track. One goal: to qualify for finals. One lap: to be completed. One season: about to end.

 

     My intense training the past five months led me to this quarter mile sprint. I stretch my legs and run with an immense fear of losing the fourth place position my teammates earned for me. My thighs are burning, my heart is bursting, and my lungs are craving air. Accelerating off the final curve, the pounding in my head drowns out the roaring crowd. The only thing that matters is crossing that thin, white line. Nothing else, in that moment, matters. My legs go numb as I barrel down the final stretch. I cross the finish line and collapse. I just completed the anchoring run of the 4x400 meter relay prelims. “We are advancing to the finals!” scream my relay teammates. My season is finished; theirs is not.  

Three months before my successful sprint, I let my team know that I would miss the final race. My step grandmother was in the final weeks of her life, and I knew that my cousin’s First Communion would be my grandpa’s first major family event without his wife. It would be my cousin’s first event without his grandma. My place on that day was not in Georgia sharing State Medals; it was in New York with my family. My coaches and teammates felt betrayed, which only made it more difficult to lead my team to a victory I would not celebrate with them. Instead, I trained for my team’s final race while I anticipated the exuberant joy on my cousin’s face on his special day. Through family, not medals, I reaffirmed my faith.

     The choice between high school track and a family faith event sparked inward reflection.  One day after practice, I was standing at the top of the stadium envisioning myself crossing the finish line at the State Meet Finals Race and receiving a medal. While I balanced the consequences of each choice, I realized my desire to see my teammates succeed was greater than if I received a medal. Once I swallowed my pride to personally win and began to train for a race I was not going to run, the grueling workouts changed to a means of camaraderie. These lessons transformed my thinking to a new understanding of my life.

     I was not born a leader. I spent my life learning how to develop the qualities of leadership. The path to the missed race converted my thinking of team leadership to that of servant leadership. I have always been the anchor of the relay and looked to for guidance and direction. Now, as the pacer during practice, my job was to give my team someone to chase and push them to their ultimate speed. Training with them, despite not having the chance of running at State Finals, taught me the first of what I hope to be many lessons in servant leadership. I became a leader who pushed my team to the goal as opposed to one who pulled them to the goal. I realized no position is better than another. No one could win the race, and no one could lose the race. We could only finish together as one.  

     Choosing family over track gave me a new understanding of the balance between faith and personal gain, selflessness versus pride, and serving the team versus leading the team. Although it would have been exhilarating to stand on the podium and receive a State Medal for the final race, my reward came in the form of personal growth. I now hold out the lesson of servant leadership in the form of a baton to the next runner in life’s race. 

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PRINCETON PROMPT

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Briefly elaborate on an activity, organization, work experience, or hobby that has been particularly meaningful to you. (Please respond in 150 words or fewer)*

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     When I was eleven years old, I strapped a 50-pound weight to my back and fell backward off a boat. I have been scuba diving ever since. There is absolutely nothing like scuba, not because of the adrenaline rush provided by diving five stories down into the endless blue nor the wondrous aquatic spectacles, but because it is the only activity where you can be surrounded by people but remain completely alone. With the exception of relaying rehearsed hand messages or remaining air quantities, you are left completely without communication. Despite the presence of your dive team, for ~45 minutes it is just you, your thoughts, and the rhythmic stream of bubbles emitting from your regulator. If I had to recommend one activity to get in touch with yourself and those around you, it would be diving, without question.

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HARVARD UNIVERSITY PROMPT

The college admissions process can create anxiety. In an attempt to make it less stressful, please tell us an interesting or amusing story about yourself from your high school years that you have not already shared in your application.*

     90s Indie Rock boomed out of our Jeep while Graham, Nathan, and I frantically chased the Holy Grail of sports cards: Rookie Players. Driving for hours on a Friday night, we nailed every Target and Walmart within 50 miles. We aimed our cutthroat competition at any baseball cards in stock. If we were lucky, we’d rip open the packs and snatch the high-value cards. With the ballooning street prices, we could make a killing if we found the golden ticket.                    

     

     The Walmart 20 minutes away was ground zero. Scarfing down McDonald’s nuggets, wiping grease stains on the seats, and trash-talking each other was preparation for our impending battle. When Walmart’s automatic front doors flew open, we launched a 100-meter dash to the card aisle. We each had a strategic path to the golden ticket, splitting up and running down different lanes. Zigzagging through baby strollers and pole-vaulting over older men with walking canes, I made shoppers stare with gaping mouths about what could be so electrifying in Walmart. We arrived at an empty card aisle where one last baseball pack dangled on the shelf like a free solo mountain climber on Half Dome. 

 

     The race was on. Barely two feet into the aisle, Graham face-planted over an estranged wobbly shopping cart. Out! Now it was Nathan and me on opposing sides of the aisle racing toward the center field. Like a baseball player diving for a dirt-washed home plate, I planted my feet, leaped forward, and caught the pack for the grand slam. 

 

     As I walked back to the car, I tossed the card pack to Graham out of sympathy for his bruised knee. We broke out laughing over the ridiculousness of the situation: three teenagers tearing through a Walmart for cardboard. Inevitably, we realized that pursuing an acquisition was superior to the acquisition itself. We weren’t merely collecting baseball cards; we were collecting memories. Those transient moments of riding a jeep with 90s Indie rock blaring on a Friday night while three friends lived on the edge of a baseball card will last with us forever.

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COMMON APP PROMPT:  Every person has a creative side and it is expressed in many ways: problem-solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistic, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

 

I was born out of a whirlwind of creativity.

My parents, both painters and poets, built the foundation of my imagination. Our home is living proof. Beads for jewelry making are trapped in the cracks of the floorboards;  grains of sand from sketching on the beach are still sprinkled on the carpet; my mother’s oil paintings dot the walls, and Dad’s landscape blueprints lay unfurled on a table. These are remnants that propelled me on an artistic journey to self-empowerment.

 

     While I had creative freedom at home, I needed to unleash my inner artist at school.  As President of Publicity for the Associated Student Body, I excelled at synchronizing ideas.  From day one, the publicity department was like confetti hitting a fan, filled with people scattered pell-mell, demanding elaborate posters in unrealistic time frames. My light bulb moment was to use mind mapping to organize the process into an informational mosaic.  I devised a document for future inventors to explain their creations explicitly, then linked each form chronologically in a train that snapped to a bulletin board. Innovation out of Chaos. The team ran like clockwork.

 

     Sometimes my creativity took on gargantuan proportions.  Imagine a 375 square foot poster painted with a sweeping condor wearing an Uncle Sam hat, colored in stars and stripes, and encircled by elephant size letters.  I was honored to design that for the 35th Annual Election Convention. When the poster was displayed, it had the impact of hanging a mammoth Mona Lisa with her mysterious smile mirroring the dormant empowerment growing inside me.

     Homecoming cemented my passion for dramatic inspiration. My favorite conception was the bouquets of cymbal-sized translucent white balloons with paper streamers cascading like a waterfall over the Royal Court. My arm stretched to hold a glowing orb like when I was a child holding my handmade glow-in-the-dark fairy jar or coloring my father’s luminous landscapes. What my family had helped me build, led me to this beautiful moment when I became fully confident as an artist.

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PRINCETON PROMPT:

Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

 

     Memory doesn’t exist in photographs; you have to live it to remember. When I was little, I absolutely adored taking pictures: running after my dog for closeups, using lizards as models, capturing the orange and pink colored sky at dawn, and snapping elusive constellations at night. Over the course of my childhood, I tallied hundreds of thousands of photos. Before I was blessed with the technological superiority of an iPhone, I reveled in taking pictures with just about anything: a blackberry, a kindle, even the grainy lens of my iPod nano. My parents once bought me a 256 gigabyte Sony SD card, a 120-dollar behemoth of storage that they were certain would last me the better part of a year. Its memory was expended in a 5-day trip to SeaWorld capturing snapshots of everything imaginable from the towering MantaRay Roller Coaster and delectable SeaSide Grill to the lowly, beige monorail and corn dog stand.

     I devoured life behind the camera, mining bytes of a digital landscape, until one day a discovery brought my predilection for photography to a screeching halt. While my desk was littered with hundreds of photos still warm off the printer, I had a revelation. As I flipped through a stack of photos of my scuba diving trip, I suddenly didn’t recognize a blue-tinted image of a reef jutting out from a shipwreck. Among the mounds of anemone and coral, spindle-legged crabs crawled out from the waterlogged hull. It was the most exquisite thing I had ever seen: an unforgettable landscape. There was no doubt I took the picture because it was stored in my camera. I physically stood a mere foot from paradise, but my memory was blank. My life behind the lens kept me from living in the moment. Confused and disturbed, I flipped frantically through the remaining photos. There were dozens, even hundreds, of photos like it, gorgeous but elusive to my memory.

 

     On the verge of tears, I stopped at a selfie of a young man posing in front of the Roman Colosseum at sunset. The amber light illuminated the monumental arches and framed the heartfelt grin painted across his face. He was beaming but not seeing anything around him. With the sight of my fraudulent reflection, my resolve shattered, and the stack of pictures dropped from my hand. With the fallen images scattered around me, I sat in grief, mourning the lost time. The young man I stared at had never lived. He was as inanimate as the settings that surrounded him, so preoccupied, so obsessed, with capturing the moment he had never stopped to be in it.

 

     From that point on, I was intent on living my life to the fullest, unencumbered by the weight of constant memorialization. My habitual need for selfies, food pictures, and nature photos ceased, and I resented taking pictures for a while as I attempted to compensate for the experiences I had missed. At the pinnacle of my indignation, I railed against being included in any photo whatsoever, protesting against team weight room pictures and the gaudy, forced photos of family outings. Occasionally, I struggled to stomach others taking pictures: the sight of my sister collecting pictures of her food before taking a bite or people posing for selfies at Starbucks. 

 

     While I eventually allowed casual photography back into my life, I remain determined to live in the moment. Every day I endeavor to make up for the experiences I forsook, not by perpetuating a vendetta against photography but by resolving to never again live my life through an aperture.

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GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY PROMPT

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My life moves like a vignette film, full of brief, bold scenes, where the minor characters are the heroes, and my role is to help give them purpose.  I am an innovator formed by inspired moments that capture how I transformed students and became a leader in my American Sign Language Club.

Vignette One

It is 7:45 am on Saturday when Christopher toddles towards the double doors, biting his lip, eyes fixed forward, to escape the confines of the school gym.  He pushed against the heavy steel doors that would not budge. I intercepted him at the ten-yard line, bent down to his eye level, and in a silly voice said, “where do you think you are going?”. He beamed a mischievous smile and ran away, daring me to catch him.  Taking the bait, I sprinted after him. That is when I knew I was ideally paired with a challenging kid.

Christopher and I sat together and journeyed through two storybooks, while he feverishly turned pages and I would mimic the story. By the time Christopher left, I was hooked.  Like a sailboat catching an unexpected wind on a placid day, I inhaled and leaped toward teaching.  Henceforth, every Saturday morning I taught students reading, writing, and math. All they needed was understanding and patience. I developed a reward system: every problem solved meant five more minutes of drawing or playtime. Like me, Christopher was a visual learner, so I taught him to add or subtract numbers by stacking blocks. As a teacher assistant, I revised old, familiar methods and formed new, creative enticements for the intellectually challenged students. I moved objects like beans to show mathematics: sliding away two beans from a seven beans train resulted in 5 beans.  Visualization lit up the classroom. 

Closing Scene

The camera pans to Christopher’s feet running toward the heavy steel doors and with a body-slamming push, the doors finally fling open. Christopher squints from the golden sunlight and runs out more prepared for the challenges of our world.

Vignette Two  

The challenge began as soon as we entered the deafening, cramped restaurant. We sat around a table pantomiming with hands, our great experiment to practice American Sign Language over dinner. One person interpreted our invisible pictures to our bewildered waitress, who patiently tried to understand the order of fettuccini from our patterns. Every glance of comprehension from the flick of a wrist, every nod of pleasure from quick-moving fingers was evidence of being understood as a human. Exhilarating and bold. 

In a busy restaurant, one would suppose a person could just recede into the Italian mural wall and plastic plants, but there was a spotlight on us as our speedy fingers danced ballet in the air; People stared, unnerving, searing stares that burned holes since our every move was scrutinized, which made all communication shut down. That was the first time in my life when I felt what it was like to wear a deaf person’s shoes. I slowly hunched my shoulders and slumped down into my seat, hoping to become one with my chair. It was beyond not hearing the whispers; it was feeling lonely. 

Closing Scene

As we spilled out of the restaurant and onto the street, we felt the relief from the fresh air and broke out laughing followed by the sound of the autumn leaves crunching under our feet.

 

Ultimately, that experience would inspire Saumini to teach people how to communicate with the deaf.  My experiences with Christopher and the restaurant experiment transformed me into my role as the President of the American Sign Language Club where I inspire conversation with the disabled. Perhaps, I became the archetypal defender, Khaleesi from Game of Thrones, riding her dragons for the underdog. I speak for those who have no voice. I am looking for a college that embraces those ideals.

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The founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross, Blessed Basil Moreau, wrote, “We shall always place education side by side with instruction; the mind will not be cultivated at the expen200se of the heart.” How do you hope a Notre Dame education and experience will transform your mind and heart? ( words)

 

NOTRE DAME PROMPT

The founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross, Blessed Basil Moreau, wrote, “We shall always place education side by side with instruction; the mind will not be cultivated at the expen200se of the heart.” How do you hope a Notre Dame education and experience will transform your mind and heart?

     While contemplating my future at Notre Dame, I imagine a mosaic of spiritual pathways  to serve the community. My first step on the path happened when I attended Summer Scholars with Professors O’Tousa and O’Brian and found  a deeper appreciation of how my accounting degree could become a life of service within my community. My mind opened to minoring in poverty studies, grasping the catalysts of destitution, and finding organizations to heal it.

 

     Following another path, I will find spiritual inspiration by serving in the stained-glass Basilica or my dorm’s chapel as a Eucharistic Minister or Altar Server. Sharing faith with the intramural sports league community, I’ll find benevolence with my brothers by cracking the bat against a white leather ball at Boehm Park, sprinting a football touchdown for the team at Ricci Family Fields, or shaking hands with the opposing soccer players at Loftus Sports Center.

 

     Rounding out my journey,  I will learn compassion by serving Project Home and Special Friends of Notre Dame. Inevitably, Notre Dame will transform me to new heights of service to struggling communities.  Lighting a flickering candle in the Grotto, I will pray for endless possibilities to forge my spiritual path at Notre Dame.

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