Application essay

I just submitted my transfer application essay to Texas A&M University! (Finally!) I just thought I'd share the essay here on my blog, especially since I haven't had time to write much on here lately.

Essay A:
Though I now use various college emails for school, my primary email is the same one I have had since I was eleven: lives2read@ hotmail.com People always laugh, and I find myself laughing too, slightly self-conscious of such an extravagant declaration, even if it is just my email.

Exaggerated though it may be, I have always been enamored with books. As a skinny ten-year-old, I often escaped to the backyard where I stuffed them under my shirt. Hands free, I would climb the tree in our backyard and read for hours. Looking back, I think that homeschooling spoiled me; no child in the public school system has the luxury of free afternoons in which to lose himself in books! When I had finished my assignments and chores, I dreamed and read and wrote and played to my heart's content.

Once I left home and started high school, I began to realize that this affection for books was really only a surface symptom of a deeper love-affair with language itself. Language was so much larger than the limitations of the library. There was the spoken word, the acted word, the sung word, even the Spanish word! My high school was too small for eleven-man football, let alone a debate team, but the teachers more than compensated for the lack by hosting lively debates in class. I loved the satisfaction of presenting an argument well, of seeing understanding dawn on my listener's face. Even more satisfying was the whole-body communication achieved on the stage as I poured another persona into my voice inflections and gestures, making the audience believe. I began to see that it was not just language that I loved; I was captivated by communication.

Though I loved all of communication's various faces, I discovered my favorite in the brown-walled room where Señora Armenta taught Spanish. Somehow, by simply learning to form the sounds of another culture, that culture was no longer closed to me. We drove as a class down to an orphanage in Juarez, Mexico, for our spring break, and as I stumbled through the vocabulary to say simple things, I was rewarded with some of the sweetest smiles and hugs I have ever received.

That trip to Juarez was not my first contact with other cultures, nor was it the last. During high school there were other times in Juarez, in Mexico's interior, and in other border towns. After graduation, I traveled to a small country in Eastern Europe where I lived and served with a team of international missionaries for six months. Since my return, my friends have included Belorussians, Turks, Iranians, Russians, and Bengals. Their cultures and stories fascinate me, and because of my own experiences abroad, I can empathize with their struggles to insert themselves into our strange American culture.

I love books, I love communication, and I especially love cross-cultural communication. But I realize that all the love, talent, or training in the world is in the end just moving air and pen-scratchings if you have nothing to say. All the written and spoken words I would ever produce would just be me in love with the sound of my own voice except for one thing: the fact that Jesus Christ has completely changed my life.

I am applying for a degree in International Studies with an emphasis in both communication and media in the hopes that I can learn to better communicate the Good News of God's sacrifice and forgiveness that has transformed me. I believe that the strong academic reputation of Texas A&M University will open doors for me after graduation and give me a strong foundation upon which to continue to grow as an effective communicator. I have already grown much: I no longer live to read; I live for Christ.