The following essay was written in response to this college
essay prompt: tell us about someone who has influenced you.
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Aunt Rose’s index and middle fingers, swollen and gnarled
from rheumatoid arthritis, stop on my 4th vertebrae. The pressure
she applies hurt her but brings me relief. I’ve just biked the 6 blocks from my
apartment. I am afraid that the police might be coming and I don’t want to be
there. The shouts and sounds of flesh hitting flesh are dramatic. The effects of
unemployment, alcohol, overloads of prescription drugs prepare my parents for
another 15 rounds of a heavyweight and HBO worthy bout. If they could sell it
as a reality show it would be limited to adults only. I’m not 18 and I need to
leave.
Aunt Rose will hum and press bone, she will tell me again
how I need to take AP math even if I never do more than simple addition as a public
defender a few years ahead in my future. Aunt Rose never went to college but
she knows how to heal wounds that come from words instead of fists. When my
father tells me to get my fat ass out of his chair or my mom says to stop
studying and get a job to help the family instead of just myself I my spirit
and soul both bleed. Aunt Rose may not be a doctor but she knows how to heal.
Aunt Rose left
southern rural Georgia when she finished high school to escape the racism and
limitations of that part of world that seems to me like ancient history. But poverty is as much alive today as it was
back then. She ended up working as a bank teller in Detroit until she retired
two years ago. Her job since then has been telling me stories and keeping me
focused on escaping the cycle of poverty that now includes the city itself. She
had a husband who sat around with friends and drank and smoked and not much
else. But she loved him and kept him and buried him. She taught me that love is
not the movies or what the boys say to get me to do things they want. She’s
kept me from having kids at a time when I was still a kid. She tells me I still
am.
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| http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/ |
Aunt Rose tells me that I need to love my country, my
president, and my race. She tells me all this every time I go over to see her
with my tears. I don’t have anything else to give her sometimes. Aunt Rose
wants me to get the chance she never had. She worked for 30 years around money
but never made much. She wants me to go to a school that will prepare me for
stability—financial and emotional. Each year Aunt Rose added some money to a
fund and compound interest kicked in.
That lesson in addition and economics will help pay for my education
over the next four years.
Her fingers stop, the knotted pressure is gone. My tears are
gone too until a new installment of my own personal Game of Thrones shows me
again the hard life of peasants and parents whipped by fate. I turn and tell
Aunt Rose I will make her proud. Aunt Rose smiles and says, “I know you will
child, I know you will.” But her eyes are also wet when she says it even as she
smiles. And these words mean more than anything I have read in a book or
anything I have heard from Nobel winners or other geniuses. Her enduring belief
has made me learn to work, to love setting goals, and to make it in life, so I
can be like her some day—helping those who need it and who don’t have other
places to turn.
Is this an effective essay to submit to a highly selective
college or university? Why or why not?
If you had to describe, using concrete details, the person
who wrote this essay, what would you say?
If you had to choose one person to admit based upon the
essay would you admit this one or the one whose essay I posted last week?
Grit has now become the
hottest meme that many selective schools highlight when they discuss who stands
out in a huge pool of wonderful students. I have talked about grit here. Does
this essay demonstrate grit? Why or why not?
Angela Lee Duckworth
Angela Lee Duckworth, a U. Penn prof, leads the research on grit
today. Does her TED talk inspire you? Should students with grit be admitted
over students who have higher grades and testing?
Are some groups of people more likely to demonstrate grit
(low income, for example)? Is there any data you have that supports your
answer?
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