Emma Fricke - The applicants

College essays that made a difference - Princeton Review 2010

Emma Fricke
The applicants

Emma played field hockey for four years and was captain of her school’s JV team for two. She was active in student government and was class secretary for two years. She actively participated in volunteer activities with her church and school. She also worked at day-care centers and baby-sat.

Stats

SAT: 1220 (640 Critical Reading, 580 Math)

SAT Subject Test(s): 580 Biology, 550 Chemistry, 600 Math Level 1

High School GPA: 3.35/4.00

High School: Belmont High School, Belmont, MA

Hometown: Belmont, MA

Gender: Female

Race: Caucasian

Applied To

Mount Holyoke College

Smith College

Sweet Briar College

Vanderbilt University

Wellesley College

Essay

Emma used the following essay in each of her applications.

Choose a significant occurrence in your life and discuss why it has impacted you.

What first comes to mind when the words sing-a-longs, radio shows and art projects are listed together? For my brother and I, these words have a special meaning. For us, they mean to load up our suitcases with every single “important clothing item” and fill our back-packs with tapes, art materials and any other fun items that we deem “necessary” for yet another Road Trip.

For as long as I can remember, my family has been throwing gear into the car and heading off on adventures. My brother and I have always been in charge of packing our own bags and bringing things to keep us entertained. Usually, we don’t need many material items. We pool our imaginations to invent games, sing songs, and play bingo. We also do back scratching, head massaging, and feet fighting. The two of us always bond no matter how feisty we have been during the weeks before. Together, we fall into our “road trip mode” of cooperation the second we hit the highways.

I am by no means saying that every road trip we have taken has been perfectly pleasant. Once, my brother, who was three months old at the time, screamed all the way from Texas to Missouri. When I was two and my brother was not yet one we moved from Texas to Massachusetts. On the last leg of the journey in Connecticut, my father came down with the chicken pox. I am told that when I was four on a trip to Alabama, I sang the same song over and over for an hour. At that point I calmly announced, “Let’s turn the record over!” And for the next hour I sang a new song. Another time, when I was in eighth grade and I thought hard rock was the coolest. I made my family listen to it all the way from Boston to Florida. My brother and I have also gone through “creative” stages. On our annual road trip to Missouri, we decorated all the windows of our car with beeswax clay. “Hey Mom,” we exclaimed, “when it melts on the windows it looks just like stained glass!” Another time we made glitter paintings. We called the glitter “magic dragon dust.” When we arrived at our campsite for the night, the mystical “dragon dust” covered our entire bodies, our seats and the floor, (and about 1% of it was on its actual designated spot, the paper.) The dragon dust lingered for years in the car. On a road trip, mechanical difficulties are bound to happen. En-route to Minnesota, our alternator belt fell off along the highway. We exited quickly but couldn’t find a gas station anywhere. Luckily, straight-ahead was K-Mart. Rejuvenated with hope, my brother, my best friend and I ran in, asking every sales clerk around if they could find us a new alternator belt for the car. “No” was the answer. Picture us: a family (plus one) sitting on the curb eating carrots at K-Mart next to a smoking and smelly car. We didn’t give up, though. Eventually, my dad found a tow-truck service to take him to a gas station so he could buy a new belt. Pretty soon, we were back on the road again singing our hearts out.

As the years have progressed, our Road Trips have changed significantly. Now we have three drivers instead of two and we all can agree on music (well, sort of). My brother has become a professional backseat driver and we can go for longer than one exit without having to stop for a bathroom break. Lately though, my family has begun taking road trips with my father’s brother and his family. They have four children ages two, four, seven and nine. Now my brother and I are the designated babysitters instead of the babysittees. They have a van and so my brother and I sit with kids piled on each lap and entertain. Last year, while driving from Alabama to Florida to visit our grandparents, we successively rapped every child’s song that we could think of; rap, apparently, is now the cool music of choice, (not hard rock, like I used to think). We also have refined our talent of making up stories “No, I want a scary bunny story, not a funny alligator story,” and have learned the gift of patience.

This gift of patience is invaluable. In order to succeed in what I love to do, working with young children; patience is something that I have to draw upon often. When I am ready to throw up my hands in desperation while babysitting or working in the church nursery, I remember how my parents dealt with my brother and me throughout the years of Road Trips. Smiling from this, I roll up my sleeves and whip out some glitter and paper or begin to sing the songs that I remember from my childhood. My parents have taught me that children are a gift and their creativity and outlook on life is something that should never be suppressed or overlooked. Now that I am a senior in high school, I am sad to think that my road trip days with my family are almost finished. Hopefully, college will be one big Road Trip where I will use the important aspects of creativity, compromise and overcoming obstacles. I will always know how to enjoy life even though what is presented to me may not be “magic dragon dust.”

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