FREED VERSE

Unfortunately, these are not a series of essays on butterflies. Rather, these are the essays I submitted for my UC applications my senior year of high school. I’ve called them my ‘butterfly essays’ because they are a personal butterfly effect in my life— without writing these, I would not have realized my passions in life, learned how sacred my happiness is, and a slew of other statements that have yet to be formed.

I was proud of them then, and I’m proud of them now. I’m putting them here to function as a baseline as I move forward with my writing, and also as an exercise in truth-telling. Sometimes, we tell the truth without knowing it.

2. Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

I love the sound of keys clicking. The rhythmic taps serve as a measure of how quickly the mind is moving, of how passionate the author is about whatever it is that propels their fingers across the keyboard. Listening to someone type tells me all I need to know about their writing; the most compelling stories come from compelling keyboards, those that ebb and flow, pause for periods of reflection and frustrated thought, have short periods of intense clicks and clacks that leave minute abrasions on the keys.

My creative side blossoms when I write. I have had a rocky relationship with the task: I was once the student who said, “I’m a good writer that hates writing,” and avoided papers at all costs. Eventually, though, I began to conceptualize the written word as something other than a neatly packaged essay following a given format to prove a given point. When inspiration fills my lungs and I am physically unable to stop fervently typing about a rapidly expanding idea, I see writing as something that has the power to make people enamored with an idea from a single phrase. Written assignments at school became a break from the constructs of life, a place where I could take a mundane prompt and cast it in a new light to provoke insight from myself and others. 

I also see writing as a way to cultivate my own identity. The voices I am able to create in different modes of writing are different masks I can assume and embellish in any way I like. In narrative, I may be a sympathetic figure worthy of the world. In argument, an impassioned activist. In synthesis, a logical and impartial onlooker. There are a million versions of myself I can create just by changing a few words. The incredible power of writing is a skill I hope to more fully develop and apply to nearly all aspects of my life to spread my passion to others while cultivating my own creativity. (336)

I look back on this and laugh, taken aback at the irony of this essay being attached to an application with ‘Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology’ checked under ‘Major.’ It’s so obvious to me now where my passions lie, and makes me wonder why I was too afraid to invest in my talents. I think I was worried that if I tried hard at something I actually cared about and failed, I would have nothing left.

4. Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.

The ink in my pen is finite. That pen can create new worlds, analyze our own, and draw novel conclusions, but it runs on passion. If my fervent scratching slows, the pigment runs lower until splotchy lines run rampant on the page. Barriers in my education have mainly arisen from reaching these splotchy periods and allowing them to be all that’s written. The most outstanding instance of this unfortunate phenomenon that comes to mind was a mundane world history class. The different levels of grain production in relation to phases of the bronze age poured a heaping glaze over my eyes as I moronically stared at a whiteboard covered in information that chronically failed at piquing my interest.

I carried on in this fashion for a few weeks, scraping by and finding the detachment between my professor and the course to be growing by the day. It was only when schools began shutting down and my biology, math, and English teachers took on the same apathetic disposition that I placed upon myself did I realize how debilitating it was to have a passion be consistently shut down. I can only imagine the massive erosion of my professor’s years of historical study and genuine interest to cause him to give up on the career he had spent his life working towards.

 I instantaneously made a resolution to not be the sandpaper that would strip my mind of query and exploration.

Since setting this intention, I have replenished the ink in my pen and willingly taken on challenges with excitement and gusto. I have developed tools to compress the charcoal provided by traditional schooling into an intricate diamond that reflects infinite scenes from every angle of its crystalline surface, each one nuanced and unique enough to demonstrate the complex thoughts and powerful emotions that forged the stone in the first place. Its furnace was lit by sparks created from calculated attention to minute details igniting into inextinguishable flames. Those flames manage to keep the inkpot full, and my pen has yet to stop scratching. (342)

I remember seeing this prompt on the list of options and scrolling straight past it. After all, I was a privileged white girl living in suburbia; there were no real educational barriers in my path. Then, I showed up to the second week of AP lit and there it was. The Monday Writing Competition (ICUP) would be to write the one prompt I thought to be impossible. It made me feel like I was putting together a puzzle of bright ideas when I wrote this. I brainstormed in truthful phrases and just had to put them together. In a way, the narrative is fabricated; but the truth is still there.

6. Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.

Since the age of about five, I have been intent on becoming a doctor. My dream influenced my choices through middle school, and I immediately signed up for a high school BioMedical Sciences program in hopes of it being the fast track to an MD. 

I later found out that the BioMed program was not exactly medical school. We learned about physiology, but the majority of the course focused on molecular processes and BioMedical technology. Though it did not fulfill my initial expectations, the program’s focus on genetics infatuated me within my first lecture. I found myself explaining Mendel’s pea plants to friends and babbling about patterns of heredity when someone used a colloquial phrase like “it’s in my genes” inappropriately. 

By my last year of BioMed, I knew I wanted to do something with my life that involved genetics. Though I had this intention in mind, I felt lost in the execution. My frustration kept with me until my Medical Interventions course began discussing precision medicine techniques to treat cancer. The concept is relatively simple: by comparing patients’ genetic profiles, we can predict the effectiveness of different treatment options. Not only is precision medicine a crucial step in enhancing patient well-being, but it also has the potential to greatly reduce the financial investments that are required for medical treatment in America. My interest piqued, not only because genetics is the keystone of the field, but also because it has the prospect to circumvent changing healthcare policy by significantly reducing cost of treatment. 

I have always seen DNA as the center of a ripple that has massive potential to change biological and healthcare sciences as we know it. Though I used to believe DNA research to be confined to academia, further inquiry shifted my mindset. I realized that by inserting genetic studies into real world applications, genetics has the potential to change the world. I see myself as one of those changemakers, reaching beyond the ins and outs of politics to make a lasting difference. (335)

I don’t have much to say about this. I think it says more than enough on its own, standing there as the most boring piece.

8. Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?

The first real thing that was taught in my freshman biology course was resilience. We were told that the single most valuable adaptive trait in a species was being able to bounce back from disaster. This lesson reverberated in my mind nearly daily when I would fervently change in the employee parking lot after going to work straight from track practice, the forefront of my mind being occupied with an unresolved trigonometric proof from earlier in the day as I went head-on into a wave of customers waiting to be helped. However packed my days grew to be, though, I always found myself smiling and excited to do it all over again. 

One of the main reasons I felt excited to accomplish was because of my family’s background. My grandmother grew up on the poor side of her small town and raised her four children largely by herself while my grandfather was working overseas. Remembering the days of sharing rooms and sneaking into barbecues for lunch, my mother taught me to have more resources at hand than the present situation may require. Though we are privileged enough to live comfortably in a beautiful city, my mom continues to teach me to maintain a portfolio diverse enough to bring value should another source fail.

Though unconscious, my mother’s expectations for how I should spend my time resonated in my actions. I always sought to maximize my performance without losing the aspects of my personal life that made me human. I learned how to integrate time for friends and family with my desire to always do more. I became a more well-rounded person as I began to appreciate the interactions I made time for and each conversation I had grew to be rich with meaning. 

I have grown to become someone that thrives on purpose, both in interactions and efforts. Real growth can only come from sustained and purposeful effort being put into everything one does, and I do not plan on growing stagnant. If I ever come close to plateauing, I will without a doubt just build myself a new slope. (350)

I came up with the last line before the rest of the essay. The line wrote the rest of it. I remember wanting to address this prompt because (a): no one else would, and (b): I needed somewhere to stick that amazing line. It feels the most immortal of the four; or, at least, the most truthful.

I wonder if the admissions department was placing bets on how long it would take for me to land on the North side of campus.