u/1864thyeon

hello r/collegeessays. i am back. the why us essay is stabbing me from behind.

really, the only one i’m concerned about is my duke why us (because it’s by definition my dream school), but i feel like my reasons are kind of shallow no matter how sincere they are. close knit community fostered by freshman year programs? sports culture? i visited twice and fell in love? pathetic!

thus, i am returning here humbly to ask: what do colleges want from the dreaded why us essay?!

(thank you for your time and have a good day.)

hello r/collegeessays. i am a junior in the process of working out my college essays (i am on draft three of my personal statement) and would like some opinions on my topic!! much thanks

disclaimer i wrote this in a car with only my thoughts and a two sentence long discord message to one of my friends explaining my thesis

the rundown: there are two parts but. we must first establish that i left private lessons for viola behind in summer of sophomore year. now put a pin in that. basically last week on the 2nd my orchestra and i went and played at carnegie hall and. me personally i was stressed tf out because we’re playing on this bigshot stage and if i make a mess of myself up there its gonna be terrible for my ego. but then we actually start playing and i go completely autopilot. completely out of it for twenty minutes and at the end of it it occurs to me that ive been grinning this entire time and im like bro wtf. but we ball so i give my stand partner a high five and walk offstage with the group. we get back to the hotel there is a lady. she is a parent of the group who performed after us and she was like u guys did great!! and she looked at me and she was like ur expression was so animated YOU as a musician are so animated and i was like woah. oh my gosh. and then she topped it off with “your performance brought me to tears” and such and such. keep that last bit in mind thats important

now back to the part where i quit private lessons. a lot of people were telling me against it and i personally was not very confident in my decision but in the words of my 2024 self i just wanted to play for the love of the game dawg. at that point id been playing repertoire and perfecting every detail for like 7 years and i felt so burnt out when i just wanted to play by my own pace. yk sophomore me felt like playing anime openings and putting my best effort into the school chamber orchestra and youth symphony, not practicing for competitions i didnt have the time, money or motivation to go to. i dont think i would love music nearly as much as i do now if i hadnt quit private lessons and if i didnt love music, the lady who saw us wouldnt have been so touched and what is the point of music but to touch the hearts of others? (holy run on sentence) but to truly fulfill that purpose you need to enjoy yourself too because trying to make others feel the music while not feeling the music yourself is just hypocritical. so ultimately i’m glad i quit playing music by the book because if i hadn’t, i would love the music a lot less

so the ultimate message is, maybe you don’t have to hit every note perfectly, so long as you love them all.

but i dont know if that’s what the big leagues want from me help. also it makes me look like im trying to pursue music in college (i’m doing english)