miyako73
12-19-2012, 03:00 AM
When can you say that your creative juice is getting dry? What do you do to replenish it? I tried writing all day today but could not come up with something I would be proud to read again and again. I tried to write about my admission application experience in an interesting way. I don't know if it is compelling enough to be included in my third chapter. Thank you for reading.
As if my memory begged for introspection, why my parents sent me to Boston to study popped up in my head like an umbrella that suddenly opened and had to be pulled back to close. It was really my mother who wanted me to leave. I could have stayed and studied at the university where my father graduated and eventually became an esteemed alumnus because of his big donation. I could have helped him run his businesses or monitor his investments, but she wanted none of it, his wife, my mother. They let me choose where to study in the States and assured me they would pay for everything. All I needed to do was try my best and finish on time, and that included not committing a crime that would get me deported. Wanting to see what could be lying beyond the Pacific Ocean, I relented. I applied to only two schools: Harvard and Boston University.
Although my grade point average and SAT score were competitive, I did not get into Harvard. The admission specialist who scrutinized my papers must have hated my essay as dense as my mother’s chocolate cake recipe. I wrote a one-page composition I intentionally filled with split infinitives and expressed at the end that if given a chance I would do an exhaustive thesis on why splitting infinitives should be formally accepted. I should have written something philosophical and erotic—like my first yearning for a warm flesh articulated at the beginning in haiku. Anything carnally existentialist and masturbatory would have been far more interesting than the tediously linguistic to a bored granny admission specialist, who pored over a hundred applications and read essays upon essays full of extravagant and puffy adjectives and adverbs repetitively used long-windedly and who would rather watch Oprah showing off her wealth and weight loss or curl and steam her unruly hair dyed ash blonde. I blamed Star Trek for my terrible essay. Its catchy slogan I heard every television episode was the culprit—“To boldly go where no man has gone before.”
Days after I got my first rejection letter, I received a thick envelope from Boston University. No way they would waste ink and papers just to tell me I was not good enough, I thought. They offered me a partial scholarship. My essay? I did a whole page of fragments reconstructing my dream of scarlet and white—the official colors of the University. I was too drunk when I wrote that one, seeing red stars and staring at albino elephants on the walls. The Jack Daniel's I stole from my parent’s glassed cabinet and drank alone until the wee hours and the person who broke my heart should get the credit. When I told my father what I did that night when he or my mother forgot to push the padlock, he could not bottle up his excited elation and contain his approving smile.
As if my memory begged for introspection, why my parents sent me to Boston to study popped up in my head like an umbrella that suddenly opened and had to be pulled back to close. It was really my mother who wanted me to leave. I could have stayed and studied at the university where my father graduated and eventually became an esteemed alumnus because of his big donation. I could have helped him run his businesses or monitor his investments, but she wanted none of it, his wife, my mother. They let me choose where to study in the States and assured me they would pay for everything. All I needed to do was try my best and finish on time, and that included not committing a crime that would get me deported. Wanting to see what could be lying beyond the Pacific Ocean, I relented. I applied to only two schools: Harvard and Boston University.
Although my grade point average and SAT score were competitive, I did not get into Harvard. The admission specialist who scrutinized my papers must have hated my essay as dense as my mother’s chocolate cake recipe. I wrote a one-page composition I intentionally filled with split infinitives and expressed at the end that if given a chance I would do an exhaustive thesis on why splitting infinitives should be formally accepted. I should have written something philosophical and erotic—like my first yearning for a warm flesh articulated at the beginning in haiku. Anything carnally existentialist and masturbatory would have been far more interesting than the tediously linguistic to a bored granny admission specialist, who pored over a hundred applications and read essays upon essays full of extravagant and puffy adjectives and adverbs repetitively used long-windedly and who would rather watch Oprah showing off her wealth and weight loss or curl and steam her unruly hair dyed ash blonde. I blamed Star Trek for my terrible essay. Its catchy slogan I heard every television episode was the culprit—“To boldly go where no man has gone before.”
Days after I got my first rejection letter, I received a thick envelope from Boston University. No way they would waste ink and papers just to tell me I was not good enough, I thought. They offered me a partial scholarship. My essay? I did a whole page of fragments reconstructing my dream of scarlet and white—the official colors of the University. I was too drunk when I wrote that one, seeing red stars and staring at albino elephants on the walls. The Jack Daniel's I stole from my parent’s glassed cabinet and drank alone until the wee hours and the person who broke my heart should get the credit. When I told my father what I did that night when he or my mother forgot to push the padlock, he could not bottle up his excited elation and contain his approving smile.