11.25.2008

yet another essay to be written

I'm in the process of writing my personal essay for my application to Colgate University, and right now the going is anything but easy.

The prompt has to do with the best piece of advice I've ever been given, and how I've employed said advice in my life. At first glance, this seemed exceedingly easy; deceivingly so, as I now realize. The short answer to this question is simple enough, and came to me as soon as I read the application. I knew I would write about what Coach says to his runners before every meet - "Take care of the little things ahead of time, and the big things will take care of themselves." But when I sat down and actually started to write, I found this statement to be a little closer to my heart than I expected. It's become something of a second nature to me, constantly at the forefront of my mind during everything from day-to-day life to important events. How do you write about something like that?

I tried to start with my interpretation of the advice, but that led to a cringe-worthy near-replica of a tenth-grade English class critical lens paper. I tried to begin with a dramatic story about an exam and a cross country race to detail an example of how I used the advice, but I imagined an admissions staff member staring at the somewhat cheesy anecdote wide-eyed in horror that this person bothered to apply to their university at all, and that idea was promptly discarded. So now I'm stuck.

Maybe what I'm afraid of is being completely honest in this essay. I'm a little wary of writing something for entry to a prestigious college that will basically impart to the reader that this advice facilitates and justifies my OCD to a most satisfying degree, or that I use it so often that I really can't think of a prime example of when I used it, or that it's easy to follow simply because, well, it's common sense.

I know this entry was a bit of a pointless rambler, and I'm sorry for making you all suffer through this for my personal cause of sparking my own thought process. But thank you for reading it anyhow, and please let me know if you have any ideas for me. The next one won't be like this. Promise.

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