The College Essay:
Four examples of a defining moment from the Class of 2006

On Jane Austen
Caity Barry-Heffernan
Yale University

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” The first time I read Pride and Prejudice, in the summer between sixth and seventh grade, the irony of its first sentence completely escaped me. Almost all the irony in it escaped me. I decided that Jane Austen, dull and uninspiring, was not for me. I kept asking myself why her characters didn’t do anything, why they panicked over insignificant events. But this summer, as I was about to enter my junior year, Pride and Prejudice was a summer reading book. Upon reading it, I found that I loved Pride and Prejudice, and I developed a profound respect for Jane Austen.

Jane Austen’s characters do actually do things. I didn’t catch on at first because I’m used to earthquakes and shootings making headlines, not the dishonor of a youngest daughter. I wanted someone to get shot the first time I read it; I didn’t want the young women to sit around discussing balls and lace. But the second time I read about Elizabeth, I realized that her discussions are the action, that Lydia’s disgraced departure is a relatively minor occurrence. My English teacher suggested that we diagram the book in order of its conflicts: first Elizabeth’s refusal of Mr. Collins, then her refusal of Mr. Darcy, and last her confrontation with Lady Catherine de Bourgh. These conflicts are precisely spaced throughout the novel, increasing climactically. Jane Austen was a neat freak. Unlike me, however, she knew how to write elegant books. I can only alphabetize other people’s books. But the fact that I didn’t notice her precision the first time around testifies to the skill with which she wrote. While everything in Pride and Prejudice is perfectly planned, nothing felt contrived. Her organization raised Jane Austen several levels in my esteem.

The second time I read it I also picked up on far more of Austen’s subtle humor. I’m bad at telling jokes. I laugh before I hit the punch line. But Austen doesn’t tell jokes. She speaks ironically, using wordplay. When Sir William Lucas announces Charlotte’s engagement to Mr. Collins and is met with disbelief, Austen writes, “Nothing less than the complaisance of a courtier could have borne without anger such treatment; but Sir William’s good breeding carried him through it all.” Only upon rereading did I remember that Sir William is by no means noble, a mere merchant who had somehow merited noble attention. Similarly, when Mrs. Bennet learns of Charlotte’s engagement to Mr. Collins, she complains, ranting and shrieking and generally having the vapors. “Such were the gentle murmurs of Mrs. Bennet,” writes Austen. Jane Austen taught me subtlety. I don’t have to tell jokes. It’s enough to tell a braggart that his humility is refreshing.

Then there are Austen’s characters themselves. They aren’t particularly brave or daring, but the ones we admire are smart. Elizabeth and Darcy are masters at hinting and digging at each other while appearing to be civil. Though their word battles aren’t as openly clever and full of puns as those between Petruchio and Kate in Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” (another favorite of mine), they are nevertheless impressive. And more than that, we know that Darcy and Elizabeth genuinely want to do what’s right, to be good. While they insult each other mercilessly, they are thinking of how much they care about their siblings and their friends. Elizabeth berates Darcy for having hurt her sister; Darcy shuns Elizabeth because he fears her sister will hurt his friend Bingley. It was refreshing for me to see characters who aren’t afraid to wade into battle with nothing sharper than their minds.

Jane Austen taught me elegance. She taught me that subtlety can be wonderful, and that being organized is not bad simply because my teachers like it. I’ve since read Pride and Prejudice a third time and found even more to admire. It’s like an atom—layers and layers of sub-shells. For me, Jane Austen is a mastermind, but one who wishes only good on her minions.

On My Family
Simi Lee
Harvard University

My grandmother was sitting in one of the hotel lobby’s soft armchairs when I came downstairs dressed in my new form-fitting coat, looking, for the first time, truly Iranian.

She was alone, but in a state of complete serenity, smiling at the whirling eddies of Farsi dialogue that her ears had sorely missed.

When she saw me, however, her smile broadened so much that it could no longer be described as anything but a glow. She clapped her hands together in delight, let her eyes drink in the sight of her granddaughter in Iranian clothes, and murmured to herself.

“Bah bah,” she whispered. “Bah bah, bah bah.”

“Mama-jun,” I said brightly, basking in her adoring gaze, “what does bah bah mean?”

My grandmother chuckled. Then, she explained in her own way, “Bah bah…it means when something is just too delightful! There is no word in English.”

Something seized me in that mosaic of a moment: at the surface, a warm affection for my grandmother and the endearing roughness of her English when it came to translations; beneath that fondness, the humbling realization that so much can be expressed with so little; and closely behind that feeling of wonder, a familiar burning desire to master a language.

My feelings for my grandmother were not novel—I have always felt such warmth for her.

Yet, that said, my astonishment at the magnitude of personal expression that lay in a simple idiom of twin syllables was like an unanticipated flash of lightning across an overcast sky.

Perhaps I would not have been so surprised if, leading up to a summer journey to Iran, my ears had not been ringing with concerned warnings from friends, my boss, and other acquaintances. Almost everyone I know cautioned me that daily dress in a coat or tunic, a head-covering scarf, pants, and closed-toed shoes would be oppressive and ultimately smother my personality.

But, because I had heard such warnings, I was not prepared for the realization that personal fashion style, though important, was not the sole means of personal expression and that, if anything, it was language that was impeding my desire to communicate and express myself—not the Islamic Republic’s dress code.

Family is at the core of my essence. It is my greatest support and source of hap-piness. However, if I wanted to know intimately the family members I had previously never met, I could not. The details they shared about themselves and their lives were in Farsi.

Music is one of my supreme passions. Playing the piano is a significant medium through which I can broadcast my emotions, and hearing any music arouses myriad sentiments, giving life to memories and dreams. Yet, when I heard Iranian traditional music, pregnant with the pounding rhythms of the daf, I could not even express a positive reaction.

If I wanted to demonstrate my love for history and art by relating what I had seen and learned at Persepolis and Savafid Palaces, if I wanted to reveal my appetite for political dialogue and debate by discussing the budding possibility of another Iranian revolution, if I wanted to follow up on my visits to mosques with questions and answers about Islam, I could not. I did not know how to say anything.

Thus, I came to understand the power of language and, immediately afterwards, to thirst for mastery of Farsi.

All of a sudden, moments and memorable words from my Spanish and French learning experiences flashed before me.

I remembered the feelings of zealously setting goals to meet the challenges presented by learning a foreign language and of reaching those targets.

Accompanying the revived euphoria resulting from flares of linguistic fluency were exciting possibilities and dreams of the future. Would I live and teach English in another country? Would I become a translator for the United Nations? Would I become the first female President and ameliorate the world’s woes with other leaders in their own languages?

The storm settled. I met my grandmother’s eyes, smiled, and nodded to show that I understood her. Then, I took a bite of the henduneh—watermelon—from the plate before me and let the words roll off my tongue.

“Bah bah.”

On Spontaneity
Leo Lester
Princeton University

A little African boy runs along the esplanade, his white shirt open and blowing in the wind, his feet drumming lightly on the stone walkway. A waist-high stone ledge rises to his left. On its other side, the ledge drops down about three times the height of the boy to a crowded beach that rolls gently into the ocean. In a fluid motion, the boy leaps up and plants one foot on the ledge, catapulting himself into a lopsided somersault and sailing crookedly but serenely onto the sand below. He continues on his way without so much as a glance backward at the old men laughing in the shade of the wall.

This past March, I toured with the Milton Academy jazz combos through South Africa for two weeks, and of all the powerful experiences that I gathered, “the flip” (as I call it) remains my most potent memory. Watching the boy’s euphoric smile spin upside down triggered in me a sort of fascination, the source of which I could not put my finger on; at the time, all I could see was a young boy having a blast.

We often struggle to excavate as much meaning as possible from experiences that have touched us in some way, but perhaps we lose something in this struggle. My first version of this essay, though rough, most accurately captured my appreciation for the flip. But with each draft, I found it harder and harder to convey my realizations in the right words. Rereading my previous attempts to capture this scene has emphasized to me my value of excellence; I desperately wanted to do justice to the flip by drawing as much meaning from it as possible, but with every draft, capturing the moment proved to be more and more elusive.

And as I came to understand the skill required to portray the flip and its significance, I also started to see the value of spontaneity more clearly. Ironically, in my deliberate reflections, I discovered that spontaneity also generates a type of excellence. The flip was slightly crooked, but I love it for that very reason. Thrust into the same situation as the boy, I would have labored over the process of landing the perfect flip. Had I finally landed a flip with which I was satisfied, the experience would have lost that degree of joy, of impulsive creativity. The way the boy never scouted his landing or faltered on his first attempt illustrated his lack of need for security or perfection; as a result, the flip, though flawed, symbolized to me breaking free of personal shackles and captured an instance of pure joy.

There are two ways to play an Ultimate Frisbee game: intellectually and emotionally. Some guys thrive on the adrenaline rush of a layout block. Others prefer the satisfaction of executing a carefully calculated offensive play. Reflecting on the flip has emphasized to me the value of these two approaches: the beauty of the flip hinged more on spontaneity than perfection, but my attempts to relate that beauty required a skill that can only be perfected by hard work and time. And although I come from a world that supports that careful, calculating approach, witnessing the flip has encouraged me to bring balance to my life by making room for spontaneity, those bursts of passion that season life with a dash of excitement. Therein lies the key to an inner balance.

On Metal Sculpting
Nate Danforth
Colorado College

Sparks fly as I touch the Metal Inert Gas welder to the rusted steel to create a complete current. My vision turns green as the auto-darkening hood kicks in and I glide the contact point across the steel, creating a flowing, molten bead. The welder’s loud buzzing sound reverberates around my eardrums as if I were in a swarm of mechanical bees. The bead winds around the curve of the joint as my fingers absorb the intense, unforgiving heat through my thick leather gloves. Heat pierces my skin and I stop the weld, as I can no longer endure the pain. Flipping up the helmet with a flick of my head, I look down to inspect my work. The weld is smooth and continuous. As my hands cool and my senses acclimate to the smell of burnt leather and smoke, I continue shaping the rugged bits of metal. Piece by piece, my steel bluefish begins to take shape.

Metal sculpting is my passion. Twice a week I drive 45 minutes up Route 22 to Essex, home of Chris Williams, a metal sculptor known for his life-size replicas of animals and dragons and whose recent works in progress include installations at Kennedy International Airport and the Peabody Essex Museum. I encountered Chris serendipitously last summer through another local artist who I worked with creating a new exhibition during my internship at the Peabody Essex Museum. Chris graciously let me come to his shop and before I knew it, when I wasn’t at the museum, I was immersed in metal sculpting projects at his studio. He continued to be my welding mentor this summer.

When I first stepped into the musty metal studio, I was in awe of the high-tech equipment and amazing larger-than-life sculptures that cluttered Chris’s small shop. Outlandish lobsters, fish, and dragons casually lay around like locals at a diner. After a few visits, I learned the processes and techniques that he uses to create his brilliant sculptures, and he encouraged me to get my hands dirty with my own hunks of metal. I began to love the feel of the heat between my fingers and the smell of the thick smoke. The processes of Metal Inert Gas welders and Tungsten Inert Gas welders and plasma cutters are so chemically and physically complex that they keep the scientific side of my brain interested while fostering my keen interest in this medium.

I love the ocean, the outdoors, and the natural sciences. Through my art, I re-create images of nature in my head and make them into steel sculptures. I love to connect my love for both art and nature. Welding metal sculptures satisfies all of my interests in art, science, and the outdoors and is the perfect way for me to combine all these passions into one. It is an amazing feeling to turn pieces of raw steel into beautifully tough sculptures that portray nature’s rugged beauty.

 

Back to Magazine