Viewpoints Editor Maya Cornish shares her experience with college application essays and how biased they can be. Graphic by Maya Cornish
Hi, I’m Maya Cornish. I am a senior at Clarke Central High School, and also the Viewpoints Editor for the ODYSSEY Media Group. For the past few years, OMG writers have explored writing personal narratives. These essays discuss how a specific event in a person’s life has shaped them. This is my personal narrative: “Selective Listening.”
As a member of the Class of 2021, it is now my turn to go through the grueling process of applying for colleges and scholarships. Through all of the applications I’ve come across, there is one question that they all ask in some form: “Tell us something about yourself that we can’t gather from the other elements in your application in 500 words or less.”
But this is a trick question. It’s more than just simplifying my experiences, my thoughts, essentially my entire personality, in a few paragraphs. These applications want to hear a story about something I already included in my application, such as the journey I took to achieve a goal of mine or the life-changing moment that sparked one of my interests. How I am their perfect applicant. I tell them what they want to hear, because they won’t listen to what I actually want to say.
These applications want to hear that I developed my career goal of becoming a pharmaceutical drug developer because I watched my grandmother having to choose between a necessary, life-saving treatment for her aggressive cancer and her rent more than once. And how I pursued that goal by getting a rigorous academic internship placement in a lab where I am now working on research about a more affordable and time-efficient COVID-19 test. Instead, I want to say that whenever I think about my future, I am completely overwhelmed. I am overwhelmed with an anxiety that I won’t meet up to the expectations of the people around me. That sometimes I can’t envision a me beyond high school, or even outside of Athens. Sure, I set plans for myself, but it feels so far away, so I instead focus on what I can do today. Making to-do lists and being able to check things off makes my life tangible, and provides me assurance that I could make it to that future.
These applications want to hear about the multiple journalistic awards and honors I’ve received, and how I can act humble about my successes by sharing that even though I did the grunt work of writing those pieces, it passed through a variety of hands and eyes to make it award-winning. Instead, I want to say that there are moments where I just feel and appreciate the world as it is, even if it’s not award-winning. How I could just stand in one spot while I’m walking my dog at night and be in complete awe of the moon, having my spirits simultaneously lifted and crushed when I think about the magnificence of space.
Some of my favorite memories are the ones when I am in the car with someone, usually just one other person, and we are driving to somewhere at night. For some reason, the night and its glittering lights bring up a different atmosphere, facilitating conversations I wouldn’t have expected during the day. We don’t even look at each other, just stare at the road in front of us. We turn the music down just enough so we can hear it in the background and it can fill the silent pauses, because instead of excitedly talking over it, we take our time with our words. We listen to what the night reveals in our hearts, and contemplate how to keep that doorway open between our mind and soul.
These applications want to hear about me being the oldest child of three raised by a single mother, and how no matter how turbulent my parents’ divorce was or how thinly my mother’s paycheck is spread, I still plan on attending a good college and living a life outside of these memories. Instead, I want to say even though my parents’ divorce was finalized three years ago, it still feels like it hasn’t ended.
My dad lives 1,000 miles away, but I will forever carry those tense situations and conversations he put my brothers and I through with me. So regardless how much he or I want to build a relationship with each other, those scars still remain. How because of those situations ingrained in my brain, I always tear up and sometimes cry when I watch children or family movies because when I relate them back to my life and what it was like when I first watched them, I feel a gut-wrenching sense of disappointment. I begin to question why as a child, easily influenced by stories of fantastical scenarios, my hopes were raised to only be shattered by reality.
Like many other children, I adored animated Disney films, especially Ariel. I considered myself different from my peers when I was younger, and so was she from the other princesses since she was a mermaid. In the Disney film, she and Prince Eric got married and had a “happily ever after,” but in the original version by Hans Christain Anderson, she suffers through the pain of walking on glass to only be horribly rejected by her prince that she trusted. The story concludes with her turning into seafoam, broken so beyond repair that she faded into nothingness. I try to be patient and give second chances, like Ariel, because even if it hurts a little bit, it’s gonna get better at some point, right? But sometimes, the hurt doesn’t go away, and like Ariel turning into seafoam, I have to distance myself from it so I don’t have to feel the pain as much. I don’t like watching movies from my childhood anymore.
Colleges and scholarships always say to be true to yourself, but that’s not the real name of the game. The game is to polish facets of yourself until they shine and to cover others, burying them deep in the dark in order to make a new character that these institutions want to play with. I understand why they want to hear about the better things in my life — so would I — but I am more than what can be put in “500 words or less.”
I’m Maya Cornish, and thank you for listening to my personal narrative titled “Selective Listening.”
