Personal Statement

Revisiting the dreaded college admissions essay

I recently rediscovered my Common Application *shivers* essay. I touched it up a bit, and present it here for your consideration.

Dear Big Scary University,

Plz admit me. Thx

- M.

—

Spencer and Jack were my childhood best friends, and every summer I alternated weeks between activities with one friend, then the other. I went to arts camps with Spencer, a lanky, flamboyant, blue-eyed blond with whom I would giggle as we critiqued the other campers’ creations. I went to basketball camp with Jack, a personable, broad, athletic kid with brown hair and dark eyes. One week, I was improving my dribbling skills with Jack; the next, I was blending pastels with Spencer.

These two friendships and facets of myself very rarely coexisted as I grew up in Baltimore. But when my family moved to South Carolina at the end of middle school, I could no longer submerge my identities in my friendships. I would not be able go to Spencer’s to watch Project Runway and tease his miniature schnauzers, nor could I walk over to Jack’s to play Xbox, or start a neighborhood football game. 

In my new southern hometown I had to find a way to assimilate and make new friends, while I figured out who I really was—and all this at the zenith of adolescent apprehension.  I thought I only had two unsatisfying choices: I could either blend parts of my diverging identities into a single bland existence or I could choose between the two.

One afternoon, shortly after starting at my new school, I went about my evening routine— flipping channels between Bravo and ESPN— when the TV glitched. Certain pixels showed college football highlights, and the rest of the screen featured a preview of an upcoming Real Housewives reunion.

I clicked and squeezed the remote, but the fragmented display remained. I grew increasingly frustrated until I realized: the frozen screen was a mirror, reflecting and amalgamating the very dichotomies that me unique.

‘Hairspray’ x Sports. A regular Troy Bolton.

Perhaps, I began to realize, I did not have to choose between my diverging paths. Yes! I thought, I can lead exercises for the basketball team and then belt out Beyoncé in the shower. I am recharged by spending time alone, but I get an extra rush speaking in front of hundreds of peers at youth group events. I blast rap music in my mom’s old Honda Odyssey on my way to volunteer at the library. I realized it is possible to be gay and have lots of straight friends; liberal in a conservative state; proudly Jewish in a southern WASPY neighborhood.

These contradictions permeate my academic and professional interests as well. I love geography, but I have treasured doing psychology research, too. I would love to explore photography and art history and I have a strong foundation in French. I excelled in world history and I have a mind for economics and real estate. These wide-ranging interests are neither incongruous nor irreconcilable. On the contrary, desires to learn differing perspectives and wade through ambivalence are what motivate me.

On that otherwise ordinary eighth grade evening, I discovered that life does not have to be a series of disappointing compromises; it can instead be beautiful, messy, pixelated combinations of seemingly disparate channels, identities, and relationships. My hilarious, creative Spencer side and my sporty, empathetic Jack attributes were not intended to perish separately in Baltimore. Rather, they were meant to thrive together in South Carolina, and wherever else life takes me. Spencer and Jack are who make me Micah.