Each year, I have the pleasure and honor of working on college essay writing with our sensitive, smart, and wonderful rising seniors. This year, Rita and Jane joined in this delight. Please enjoy these short excerpts from each of their exceptional essays. —Rebecca
Cora Anderson
Even though I was alone, my mind wasn’t driving me crazy. The cacophony of thoughts found conversation in the nonstop birdsong and the wind whispering through the trees. …. I found a stillness in solitude out there that I’d never experienced before.
Mariela Alschuler
There are ancestors everywhere I turn… those who came before me in their writing, their performing, their advocacy. I have the whole world to learn from… Like love, heritage multiplies rather than divides, and I am fortunate enough to have an abundance of it.
Isadora Ardizzoni
Once I got a taste of what it was like to write in a way that captures the fullness of life rather than just the most intense moments, it became abundantly clear that writing was more than just a tool for expressing myself. It became a medium to translate the overwhelming beauty of experience into something I could conceive.
Henry Arroyo
In a similar fashion to Dolly Levi’s flamboyant return to the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant, I made my reentrance to musical theater in a burst of glory after years off the stage.
Leah Bae
The first time I hear Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, I am sitting in the car with my father, four or five years old. I have yet to ever lay a hand on a violin, understand the feel of steel-wrapped strings under my fingertips and the friction of a bow’s hair coated in white, chalky rosin. I sit silently, hearing the piece as if I am hearing music for the first time.
Kendal Bazerman
There is freedom in an unscripted journey, and the unexpected is becoming my friend. For it is now that I’ve let go that I am fully in control, at last able to believe that regardless of what lies ahead for me, I am ready.
Emily Charlton
You wander through a dark alleyway. The light and laughter from the town vanishes behind you. Unseen eyes penetrate through the inky darkness. … you come to a lonesome candle aglow with purple light….With one small breath you extinguish it. The darkness consumes the world around you. This was my first experience with the game of Dungeons & Dragons.
Tiger Collins
Some days I’m rejected hundreds of times. Here’s how it usually goes:
… “Hi, would you like to buy a homemade popsicle?”
…“Not today.” “No thank you.” “Maybe after lunch.”
And then I move on to the next. The pain begins to dim after the fiftieth “no.”
Arden Delehanty
This past August, I sang karaoke with strangers, acted in a short film, and read a book aloud to campers as a counselor in training. Knowing that I’m making progress matters more than people’s perception of me. Finding my voice again has meant letting go.
Moon Emigli
The teacher’s face lit up. “What a wonderful idea!” A wave of relief washed over me. A seemingly daunting situation swiftly transformed into a favorable outcome and I was determined to stay present in the moment and maintain a positive outlook.
Madeleine Ford
Language, to me, is a game. It’s a dance. It’s what reactivates the child within me, like water to gouache. I love the beauty in meticulousness, knowing where to place every particle and pronom relatif. I love the gorgeous associations between sounds and shapes, the way pronunciation becomes a visual or even tactile experience…
Ella Goodman
I rode with [my friends] until I was the last one left, and then rode a few more stops before getting off. Though a small step, it meant a lot that I had actually been able to go it alone.
…I no longer jolt whenever the train moves too quickly, slowly, loudly, or quietly. That’s true of life: the more jolts, the easier it gets to adapt the next time.
Preston Leong
Chef Chris entered, two black chef coats in hand. I knew that I’d been close to getting my Masterchef black jacket… But being in the spotlight wasn’t my greatest interest. Inside, my excitement rose like a baking cupcake. Outside, my quietude and stillness dominated. The moment was bittersweet.
Jun Lowenhar
At ten, Noemi was the role model for all of us, standing in the middle of the chaos and diligently practicing scales on the violin. She was carrying on the proud heritage that started three generations before us…When I’m older, I thought, I’ll be just like that. There was no question about it. Music was in my blood, after all.
Hunter Maguire
Welcome to Window Gazing 101. Any variety will do: airplane, train, car, bedroom.
My only rule; look, don’t glance. Allow the passing scenery, its gentle thrum of people and nature and time, to transfix you. Look long and hard, and you’ll find divinity in the mundane…
Catherine McIntyre-Polner
Maybe it was fate that the worksite I chose happened to be the senior center. The manager role I never imagined having, a worksite I ended up loving—all those wonderful things seemed to stem from that one happy accident
Dalia Mullens
I have since spent months volunteering in the emergency room…providing comfort to patients and their families in the face of uncertainty and pain, and advocating for patients who need care. Most days, I still feel that childhood smallness inside me. But I also feel the fight. Strength exists in the depths that we will dive to fight for others, and that strength is what burns deepest in me.
Izzy Oh
Whenever I hesitate before writing… I think about the kids who didn’t write for anyone but themselves. When I’m terrified of sharing my writing because it feels like giving away a part of myself, I think of how they shared with me without fear or shame and try to do the same… I’m forever grateful for the way the kids in my workshop helped me by just being themselves.
Nina Rogers
Sol is “sun” in Spanish. My name is Nina Sol. As a little girl, I didn’t like my name, and it didn’t feel like me. I remember living in NYC, walking on hot sidewalks with the sun beaming down on me… I turned to ask my mom, “Why didn’t you name me Nina Sombra?…It’s too hot in the sun.” But, overtime, I would come to love el Sol.
Wren Salane
Now as I sit comfortably in my own skin…I find I see myself not as a political statement, not a blunder of nature, but as a metamorphosis. I have spent my entire life feeling trapped … and if I can offer somebody else a way out of that labyrinth, or at least sit back and listen, then I know I love the person I’ve become.
Alex Sheinkin
In defense of my past self, it’s hard to know when people offer you something if they mean it or if they’re just being polite…So, instead of trying to discern whether an offer was genuine, I erred on the side of caution. At some point, saying “no thank you” became almost automatic.
Lex Stipanov
When I was young, my voice was taken away from me… My older sister told me to be quiet, and my family treated me as if I were invisible. There was a block between my thoughts and my voice. As a trauma response, I stopped speaking. Since I never expressed my feelings, I started to feel invisible. Then I found Brave Trails, an LGBTQ+ leadership camp I’ve attended for the past three years.
Maxine Wanderer
I am 16 and giving birth on a couch on national television.
Three cameras point at me, sweat drips down my face as I hold a silicone baby covered in goo. I’m playing a girl who leaves her baby at a fire station because she is unable to care for her. I have never met a person my age who was pregnant, and suddenly I am representing this complicated, misunderstood character…
Another take; I close my eyes, thinking of my Grandma.
Tara Wong
The air booms with ecstatic clamor as a boy clenching a tennis racket in a white-knuckle grip breaks across the dividing line into our home territory… Exhausted, I slump over– I brace my palms on my scraped-raw knees; sweat plasters my flyaways to my forehead– “I think it’s time for a break,” someone suggests … I nod– yes– but my voice comes out in a parched wheeze–
And only then do I finally realize I am hurting.
