Assignment: Marginalia
Take notes on the sentence style (types? punctuators? length? style?) and word choice (simple? academic?)
What kind of personality are you meeting here?
What makes this narrative compelling? Look for rich reversals of expectation.
What makes this narrative a good choice for a college essay (i.e. why do you think an admissions counsellor would want to add this student to their incoming freshman class)?
College Essay from Santa Clara (Mr. Cameron)
Prompt: Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Bullying is an interesting dilemma: on one hand there are the psychologists and behavior therapists trying to find the root of the issue, trying to find someone to blame; on the other hand there are the administrators desperately trying to convince parents it's fine to send their children to school, as the problem is under control. And on no hand in particular there was eleven-year-old me, and a bully was my problem. His name was Jim, a smooth talking 2nd-generation Korean with a history of soccer and non-competitive gymnastics. He had four inches on me and a mean streak a quarter mile long. His methods were by no means unorthodox, a dumped out backpack here, a shove and a name called there. I knew the three rules for dealing with bullies, they had been taught to my entire graduating third grade class: 1. Tell a yard duty, 2. stay with a friend, 3. never egg them on. This miracle cure did little to fix my predicament. California school budgets were on a steady landslide, and the yard duties weren't the most motivated arbiters. I was the new kid in town, that meant people avoided me like a plague doctor in Western Europe, and the fact that the resident bully had turned his eye on me meant that I was going to hold that title for quite some time. The mere idea that a bully is egged on is completely contrary to the idea of a bully: one who pushes, not because he has found a response, but because he is seeking a response. To this day, I am not sure who these rules were written for, but it is clear that they were not written for me.
“Just bust his head open,” my fourteen year old brother suggested nonchalantly, as my mother drove us to Boyscouts one evening. Now I was a very scrawny child growing up: the doctors said that I was underweight, undertall, and none-too-athletic. The idea that I could bust anyone's head open was outright preposterous. My dear mother chimed in, almost on cue, with the ever so cooing motherly response that fighting was never the answer and that I should try working things out with him. Now it was true that I had no inclination to fight him, and while the advice certainly would make sense a priori, I was finding out very quickly that talking to a bully only shows them that they are getting through.
My mother was forced to begin work early so that she could get off in time to pick me and my brother up from school, so I spent countless mornings over the years sitting in the office waiting for school to begin. Now the day prior my bully felt it was time to kick his bullying up a notch with new complex insults and fake out jabs meant to induce flinching, and my anxiety was mounting. I was no Hercules, yet there I sat in the waiting room of Hades, watching the moments tick by until my oppressor would arrive, with naught but the steady clack of the receptionist's acrylic nails upon a keyboard to calm my nerves. Flimsy advice from the previous night buzzed in my head. After what felt like an eternity, the school bell rang, and I shuffled to my home room. We met in the hallway, his knowing smile to my grimace told me he knew exactly what I was thinking. “I'll see you at lunch time,” and that was all he needed to say. By this time my fear had manifested itself into sheer panic, and my brain was mentally check-listing all of my options. My last attempt at being sent to the nurse's office had been unsuccessful. The first break came and went with no sign of my tormentor. Lunch passed quickly until a wrong turn in an empty hallway brought me face to face with my villain. “Hello Scotty the potty,” he said intimidatingly, employing the latest of his nicknames. I did not run, I could not run, but I could fall, and fall I did. I stumbled over my feet as I turned to escape and landed flat on my face. This, my bully seemed to find quite hilarious, and he could not contain his laughter. It was not the cruel mocking laughter I had grown accustomed to hearing from him, it was a genuinely funny chuckle. I immediately recognized my impossible chance and fell again, this time on purpose, topping it off with a somersault and a funny face. “Better not touch me,” I said, “I'm a potty and I stink!” My impromptu tactic seemed to be working, and before long my antagonist and I were in hysterics, hopelessly late for class. We would grow to be good friends, and the differences we had assumed in each other turned out to be nothing more than assumptions. So I defeated my bully, or at least befriended him, which upon reflection was a great deal more rewarding than what conventional wisdom teaches would have been the solution.
But what did I learn? My bully was not the only one who was guilty of wrongs against his fellow man. I learned that his hostility towards me was due, in part, to my shyness upon our first meeting, which he interpreted as animosity. I subconsciously categorized him as a fool and an intimidator, in less polite terms, and considered him someone to be avoided at all costs. I adhered to my judgment in every one of our subsequent meetings; he did not start out as a bully, I made him into one through my disdain. My reluctance to listen to the advice of my mother was, until that point, a recurring theme despite my Christian upbringing. This blatant flaw in my own personal understanding was made painfully clear to me through the undeniable outcome of my ordeal. I also discovered within myself the latent ability to make milk come out the noses of young children, a skill that has garnered me a great deal of popularity among the cub scouts that I preside over on Wednesday evenings. Here I am today: smarter, more outgoing, slower to judge, and far more blessed, both in friendship and family than I could have ever been without my bully and dear friend.
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