College Essay Example #3: The Embroidery
Scientist
This essay is about a writer's Etsy store and the connection she draws between fashion
and science.
I stretch the thin fabric over my hoop and pull it tight, wedging the nested rings
between my legs to secure them shut with my other hand.
Next I get out the thread. Each color is wound tightly around a paper spool and stored
in a container whose original purpose was to store fishing tackle.
I look at the pre-printed design on the fabric and decide what colors to select. Orange,
red, pink, yellow–this design will be as bright and happy as I can make it.
Embroidery is where the STEM and creative parts of my identity converge. My
STEM side is calculated. She meticulously plans the designs, mocks them up in
photoshop, and painstakingly transfers them onto the fabric. She organizes each thread
color by its place in ROYGBIV and cuts every piece to an identical length of 18”. Her
favorite stitch is the French Knot, with its methodical “one, two” wrap sequence. For
her, art is about precision.
My creative side, on the other hand, is messy. She throws thread scraps on the floor
without hesitation, and she haphazardly adds design elements in pen. She does a Lazy
Daisy stitch very lazily while adding an indescribable flourish to a simple backstitch.
Her methods are indeed madness: she’ll border a design with glitter glue, hang a
finished project upside down, or stitch a big red X over a perfectly good embroidery.
For her, art is about meaning.
While these two sides of myself may seem at odds, they actually complement
each other perfectly. At least, that’s what 3,000 of my Etsy customers think. From
three-inch hoops to massive wall hangings, my Etsy shop is a compilation of the best
embroidery I’ve ever done. My precision and meaning have earned me hundreds of
five-star reviews from customers whose lives I’ve impacted with my art. And none of
that art would have been possible without STEM me and creative me.
My STEM and creative side complement each other in more than my embroidery life
too. What began as a creative side hustle has actually made me a better
scientist.
Before I started embroidering, I approached the lab bench with an eye like a ruler.
Poured a millimeter too much liquid? Better get a pipette. Went a degree over boiling?
Time to start over. My lab reports demonstrated my knowledge, skill, and care, but
they didn’t show any innovation or ingenuity. My precision led me to be a good
scientist but not an exceptional one.
I realized that to be exceptional, I needed to think like a real scientist. While scientists
are careful and precise, they are also interrogators. They constantly question the world
around them, identifying previously unseen problems and finding creative solutions.
To become the scientist I wanted to be, I needed to allow myself to be more
creative.
When I had this realization, I had just begun my embroidery business. I didn’t
understand that my creativity could also be so useful in the lab. I set out on a new path
to use more creativity in the pursuit of science.
To inspire myself, I brought an embroidery project to the lab. On it, I stitched a
compound microscope and a quote from one of my favorite scientists, Marie Curie. It
reads, “I am among those who think that science has great beauty.”
In the lab now, I’m not afraid to take risks and try new things. When I boil my
mixture too long, I still start over. But occasionally, when my teacher permits, I do a
second experiment on the rejected liquid just to see what will happen. Sometimes
nothing happens. Sometimes it results in utter failure. But other times, my mistakes
create blue, green, and purple mixtures, mixtures that bubble and burst and fizz. All of
these experiments are stitches in my quest to become a cancer researcher. They are
messy, but they are beautiful.
