Admissions Letter

Since I could pick up a crayon, I have been drawing. Since I learned the alphabet, I have been writing. From childhood, the inexplicable need to create has driven me to expend hours upon hours wrought across thousands of sheets of paper. Booklets of crayon drawings I stapled together still fill my shelves, their subject matter so rough that I can no longer decipher it. Expressing myself through art and the written word is how I verify my own existence. By having physical proof, made of paper and ink, I can prove that I have worth at the end of the day.

Over the past several years, I have been fortunate enough have my efforts verified by others: I won the Best Book Award at the 2005 Ohio Young Authors Conference as a fifth grader, while participants from neighboring schools ranged from fifth to eighth graders. In the 2007 Ohio Power of the Pen regional tournament, I won third place for a short story. My art has been awarded over a dozen blue ribbons at the county fair in elementary, middle and high school, and I was awarded the first ever scholarship to attend the annual Writers’ Workshop at my college due to the former dean believing that my writing was worthy of being reviewed by participating authors.

Throughout my college career, I have discovered that my passion for writing extends beyond the realm of fiction. Writing research papers and persuasive material comes naturally to me. I enjoy posting concise statements of philosophical or political opinion on social media sites in order to provoke conversation and debate. Even print and television advertisements spark my creativity, frequently resulting in rants about how much more effectively I could market a product with the same resources.

This is something business courses have prompted me to realize; something that I had previously been unaware of. Without the ability to harness language to convey why a product or service is necessary to consumers, its quality, no matter how remarkable, is meaningless. With a degree from a university that shares my values and emphasizes excellence and hard work, I will be able to use my creativity to help businesses connect with potential consumers, and those consumers, in turn, will be able to select services that best fit their needs based on thorough and concise information.

I believe that your university is the best organization for me to pursue a degree in corporate communications through, and that my degree will enable me to harness my passion for writing and communications to connect to and benefit the world around me.

Dissect

He sits down next to me on the first day of class,

Handsome, anxious, pensive.

The proximity to another human being makes me shrink against my seat.

Murmurs swarm the air,

Of awful jobs and horrendous dates and weather

That stirs up muddy filth and homicidal urges.

Hey, he says, and I nearly jump. I smile and say hello.

Wide, intelligent eyes framed by a dark and beautiful face

Make my hands shake as I reach in my bag for a pencil.

He asks me if I’m excited for this semester.

I tell him I’d rather be at home playing Minecraft.

He laughs. Acquaintanceship has been broached.

He tells me that his sister lost her license,

That he almost didn’t make it today because his parents made him drive her.

Is there a favoritism issue somewhere in there?

He rolls his eyes.

Does them making me pay for her Starbucks when she has no job answer your question?

When I laugh and nod, he turns toward me a little.

Conversation has started.

I have actually made a friend.

The second hand hits the twelve and class begins.

Syllabus, expectations, weekly assignments, no extra credit. We begin chapter one.

The PowerPoint is in Garamond, the bullet points are little stars.

You draw faded, Expo marker lines between us. Dissect the room.

Teach us the futility of fairness, the satire that is understanding

And guilt piles onto my shoulders

For the actions of my great grandfathers and their fathers before them.

Pens tap on papers, pop cans hiss open.

A chime – someone was just mentioned on Twitter.

You reveal the subliminal messages

In everything we do;

The fear we don’t realize we’re feeling

And the oppression exacted by people who don’t intend it.

Monsters or victims,

No one is the equal.

I look down at my spidery hands,

At the sickly-pale skin

And what it represents.

The shrill cry of a zipper welcomes another – and another –

A whirlwind of coats and purses ensues as the period nears its close.

You give us our homework – one through seven in complete sentences.

The boy turns toward me now,

His lips parted to speak

I duck my head to hide behind my hair

Gather my books

And hurry out the door.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I am twenty one years old.

The sky is bright, but wind whips the petunias and the trees.

I’m sitting on my mom’s couch. Cops is on, and I’m considering a Mountain Dew.

For the past few days, I have felt myself slipping into a deep depression. Not the kind that incapacitates you – this is merely the anxiety that blurs the edges of your thoughts and vision until you’re numb.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

“You’re young,” some say. “Take advantage of it while it lasts.” While what lasts? My hard-headed ignorance? My utter lack of a niche in this world?

“Keep doing exactly what you’re doing,” a few have advised me. I wish that was sufficient.

What I hear more often is, “You need to pick somewhere to transfer to. The government will only give you so much financial aid. You need to pick a major. Get a good job. You’re only on my insurance for another four years, you know.”

Yes. I, in fact, do know. You tell me this as the man on the radio behind you screams that college is nothing but indoctrination; that you don’t need it to succeed at something about which you’re passionate. I know. I know.

People who have had near-death experiences weep for me. “Life is such a gift,” they say. “I never understood. Life is such a gift.”

Then why does a brief second of calm make me feel like I’m reeling as my opportunities shove past to spiral out ahead, far beyond my reach?

And how do they still feel as if they’re hovering in the air around me like apparitions, just waiting for me to grasp them?

If the answers won’t come, I’ll have to create them myself.

~ MRM