It’s a post-Christmas ritual: the sudden flurry of $75 credit card payments, the uncanny appearance of word processors instead of internet browsers on high school seniors’ computer screens. I’m no exception—like many others, I managed to convince myself that the perfect way to bask in the post-holiday glow would be by touching up college applications.
So on the 28th of December, 2012, I wasn’t helping my brother take down the Christmas tree. Actually, neither were my parents, nor grandparents. Apparently, one (14 year old) person was adequate for the task of taking down and organizing hundreds of ornaments and collapsing the 5 foot high faux tree. The task of polishing my final college essays, on the other hand, required the expertise of four additional family members.
“What on earth does “my memories are mere wisps” mean?” exclaims my grandfather. “Perhaps you mean ‘my memories are mere figments’.” Well, no; that makes absolutely no sense. Before I can interject, my grandmother offers ‘my memories are mere fragments.’ Maybe “my memories are blurry”, I counteroffer.
After five minutes, we settle on “hazy” memories. I take comfort in the fact that this very word change might, just might shift the 3-month-distant fulcrum to favor acceptance over rejection.
Other edits manage to pass through the quadruple gauntlet of my parents and grandparents without too much trouble. Most edits make sense, but a few are questionable. (My grandfather: “You used a gerund, verb-preposition, and noun, in that order! If your complement sentence isn’t parallel, then nobody knows what the hell you’re talking about!”).
The evening continues a couple keystrokes at a time. The backspace button on my keyboard is having a field day.
I’m lucky to have family members that care. Not everyone has a grandfather that scours his grandson’s essays for misplaced modifiers; not everyone has a grandmother that would take the time to split hairs regarding the usage of “wispy”, “fragmented”, “figmented”, “blurry”, or “hazy” memories. Not everyone has a grandfather in Taiwan meticulously perusing college rankings, computer literacy (hell, English literacy!) be damned.
It’s inevitable: college applications are going to be littered with contrived “lessons learned!”, manufactured emotions, painstakingly crafted “natural sounding” conclusions. For me, reading through my essays is like navigating a swamp of dubiousity. It’s deeper in some parts, sure (“My summer devoted to mentoring impressionable children, in lieu of my original rigorous science and research plan, has spurred me to become a broader-minded and more empathetic person” et cetera et cetera et cetera). There’s cognitive dissonance as my brain tries to superimpose the Kiffa it knows with the Kiffa it produced.
Yet somewhere in this swamp of half-truths, an island rises out, free from linguistic sleights-of-hand. It represents probably the only college essay I’m willing to share. Fittingly, the cooperative nature of the essay editing/writing process helped me realize that this essay, alone, shines through in pure, unabashed honesty.
I'm incredibly lucky.
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