College Application Essay

I am not a Martin Luther King, devoted to a movement, or a Christopher Columbus, devoted to a quest, or a Leonardo di Vinci, devoted to an image. Yet everyone needs some devotion in his life. I am a musician, a daughter, a Christian, a traveler, a sister, a friend, an animal lover, a writer, and many things besides. The biggest dilemma for me is finding ways to fuse these different parts of myself into a recognizable person. I would need several lifetimes to pursue all of my dreams individually, so they must become one dream, one working vessel of passion. So how can I mix my zeal for music, for example, with my need to write? They are one in the same for me, really, both means of ardent expression of sadness or anger or joy.

The experience that brought about the conception of my understanding is starkly fixed in my memory. I was at a concert featuring one of Schubert’s Suites for String Quartet and my lack of familiarity with the work only served to heighten my already bursting excitement. They were late getting started and the audience around me fidgeted and chattered. I ignored them, sitting still in my seat, tense with anticipation. Finally the lights dimmed and a pregnant silence took hold. Despite my expectancy I was unprepared for the sudden eruption of applause like a bomb detonating in the hall as the four black figures strode onto the stage. Reminding me of Virginia Woolf’s description in The String Quartet, the performers “seated themselves facing the white squares under the downpour of light, rested the tips of their bows on the music stand, [and] with a simultaneous movement lifted them.” I leaned forward on my seat, straining to hear the first note even before it sounded. With an almost telepathic communication from the first violin, it began. From that moment I was lost. The audience, the musicians, even the music itself was forgotten, swept away by the surge of emotions that engulfed me. As I listened, or rather encountered the exquisite performance, for it was more intimate than listening, I realized with more force than ever before, that this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to make people feel like this when I sang.