Bohórquez 1

Virginia Bohórquez

Nicole Lyssy

ENC 1101: Composition 1

September 20, 2020

Genuine is the Way to Go

The words faded before my eyes scrambled into gibberish. I shut the laptop in dismay

and looked out the window focusing and defocusing a bird sitting on the bars. I once heard

somewhere that when your eyesight felt tired, to detail objects around you in an attempt to reset

your view, but despite rebooting my vision, my mind stayed blank. There was only one question

circling my thoughts, am I interesting enough for universities? Through this following story of

my experience writing my college essay I learned that being genuine was always the best choice.

I’m not a fan of silence, I’m always forming words or listening to them. While brushing

my teeth I watch YouTube videos, while I clean I listen to music, in the shower I sing (or at least

try to), even when I’m relaxing I love listening to acoustic music, and I’m always chattering

about anything. Therefore, writing about something in my life has never been an issue for me, so

imagine my surprise when I couldn’t pinpoint what to write in my college essay. Every idea I

came up with seemed so dismissible, uninteresting, and just not good enough. The words Dr.

Rosie, my college counselor, had said endlessly kept repeating themselves over and over, she

believed a good essay was the key to worming your way into a university, because despite my

grades, my SAT, and my extracurriculars, they wanted to know what made me special…except I

was clueless as to what that was. I went over the list she and I made about some of my qualities:

I’m outgoing, I dance salsa, I’m open-minded, I like reading, and I lived in Indonesia for 6 years.

At the moment, all of these qualities seemed so trivial, though looking back at it now I don’t
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know how living in an isolated camp in Sumatra was trivial in any way, but well in the moment

it seemed like the most normal thing to me. I went over my brainstormed ideas and felt they all

lacked passion, I had seen examples that were mesmerizing how students connected their

memories through a passion and created what could only be called a masterpiece. I sighed, took a

sip of my coffee, and defeatedly pushing away my insecurities chose the one thing I felt made

me special, my experience as an international student. I let myself breathe for a second and let

flashbacks of my life come at me like raindrops and I bathed in the rain.

I was now eight years old, my ears perked attempting to decipher the assignment my third

grade teacher, Ms. Brenda, was discussing. I was just starting to learn English and from the

words I was able to grasp I managed to understand that she wanted us to write a story about our

most recent vacation. I wrote about my trip to Bali, furiously jotting down in Spanish about the

incense-filled Buddhist temples, the Luwak coffee made from animal extracts, and the parrots I

got to hold at the zoo. I turned in my creation and Ms. Brenda instead of typing my story into

Google translate, told me to translate it. I stared blankly at the circle her green-tea-filled thermos

left behind everywhere until Ding! Ding! Ding! Got it. Ms. Brenda amused, watched as I ran

around the room flapping my arms like a parrot, roaring like a tiger, and acting out dances,

drawing the outfits the dancers wore, and slowly but surely, she understood. That day I came

back home excited to tell my parents about the experience, and I learned that you have to look

positively at things, be creative and a problem-solver. That memory has stuck with me ever

since, and she was one of the most wonderful teachers I ever had. A few years have gone by and

I’m now 12 years old, surrounded by the drugging smell of worn-out books, checking out the

whole Percy Jackson series. All the nerves in my body ecstatic and ready to absorb yet another

story. At this point, I was a fully certified bookworm, I thrived off fantasy and adored living
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someone else’s story. Who would’ve guessed that only a few years ago I got disgusted at the

thought of reading a book, so much changed the moment I decided to try new things.

I opened my eyes again and was back in my room, having already moved from Indonesia

three years ago. Indonesia was one of my greatest teachers, a place that changed many of my

perspectives about the world for the better and opened my eyes to an array of possibilities…I

now knew what to write about in my college essay. Out of all my memories in Indonesia I picked

the ones I felt were the most fluid and the most important in showing how this place made me

who I am today.

Despite having struck a jackpot with this idea, I still felt my essay lacked passion or that

it-factor that universities liked. Unsure, I took my essay to my college counselor and she actually

loved it, she felt she knew who I was across my essay. I was surprised to say the least and spoke

to her about my previous worries to which she responded that the best essays came from

individuals who were genuine and were themselves, without trying to impress.

This response stuck with me ever since and through my writing process I realized being

genuine is not just important in personal writing and resumes, but also overall life. The best

relationships come from ones that are genuine and where they mutually respect and support each

other, with no need to be showing off. I was trying so hard to reflect a certain persona, I forgot

what the true nature of the college essay was, which is describing who you are and I wasn’t

going to achieve that through feigning a passion, but instead writing about something normal, but

making it your own enlightenment.