College essays that made a difference - Princeton Review 2010
Maria Inez Velazquez
The applicants
Maria was editor-in-chief of her high school’s award-winning literary magazine, a participant in the Alpha Kappa Alpha Partnership in Math and Science Program, and president of her school’s Amnesty International chapter.
Stats
SAT: 1400
ACT: 32
High School GPA: ∼4.16
High School: Springfield High School of Science and Technology, Springfield, MA
Hometown: Springfield, MA
Gender: Female
Race: African American/Latina
Applied To
Connecticut College
Elms College
Smith College
Trinity College
Yale University
University of Massachusetts—Amherst
Xavier University of Louisiana
Essay
Maria used the following essay in each of her applications.
Please describe an experience of great personal importance to you.
In Search of Solitude
It is hard to come home again. I’m finding that out now. Over the summer I was stripped away, like an onion, a gradual pruning of all but the essentials. I became purified. I spent the summer as far away from home as I could get: two weeks in New Mexico as a Student Challenge Award Recipient, contemplating unknown constellations; four weeks as a scholarship student at Xavier University in New Orleans.
Leaving home was the scariest part. I have made myself malleable; I am the good student, the understanding friend, the dutiful daughter. I have always defined myself in terms of others: the ways they understood me was the way I was. It is so easy to do that. It is an easing of the mind, a process of surrender, a fading to oblivion, a surrender that kept me from thinking too hard about my self.
After building myself up from a heap of other people’s thoughts and dreams, how shocking, then, to emerge into the stark fluorescent lights of an airport, to enter its crass brilliance, and discover I had no self, no one to define me. My plane ride to this new and foreign land of Albuquerque, New Mexico was my first solitary journey, my first layover, my first disembarking; I got off the plane in a cold panic, lost. I frantically tried to disappear once again, to hide from the harsh light. Huddled between the shelves of an airport bookstore I examined myself and found that I was empty. There was nothing there to see. Finally, the passage of time and the glare of the cashier ripped me from the grip of Nullity. Prompted by her look, I grabbed the cheapest, nearest book I could find. The book’s weight in my hand was vaguely comforting.
In New Mexico, my book and I are left alone again. I spend the hot, noon bright days letting the glory of bone-white sidewalks burn away my pretensions towards identity. I play lightly with my voice, letting it flit and gravel-throat its way through stories and normal conversation. I experiment with the movement of my body, the inclination of my look. I discover I can be profound. I become outrageous, controversial, glinting glitter-bright fingernails every which way.
Two weeks later, my book and I leave New Mexico. I have memorized its cover: The Hanged Man by Francesca Lia Block. We travel onwards to New Orleans; its weight in my hands is again an anchor to reality.
In New Orleans, I am seduced by sepia, absorbed into a heaving mass of hued skin; I gladly lose myself in the balm of sweetly scented hair and cocoa butter. Here, again, I play with my identity. I leave my hair unrelaxed and wear it out. I learn to flash my eyes out, a coquette, and link arms with two girls I have befriended, we three ignoring the catcalls and hoots that track us down the street.
In New Mexico, I discovered the desert night. I let its silence fill me and transform me, until I was at once ethereal, eternal, serene. In New Orleans, I learn to be strong: I am the one the dorm girls come to at night when the black sky has descended and someone has ordered pick-up chicken; I am the one known for being unafraid. By now, I have let my nails grow out, long and blunt, colored them a crimson red — looking at them, I feel taloned and fierce, teeth blackened and filed to a point, like some old Mayan war story. I let my walk mime assertive strides.
It is hard to come home again, to once again surrender to the community of family, friends, and peers, whose chafing needs and desires chafe and brush against the skin with a subtle, bitter susurrus. It is hard to return to school, to the daily routine: I feel sometimes as though the person who claimed mountains is no longer there. But I try to remember this: the human soul is like a deck of tarot cards, and the mind is the dealer. Each card flipped is a facet of the potential self, each card a piece of a new person to be.
“Some of the faces will be mine. I will be the Hanged Man, the Queen of Cups. I will be Strength with her lions.”
—The Hanged Man, by Francesca Lia Block
See this page to find out where this student got in.