Getting Along With Nerves - Harvard - Successful college admissions essay
Hometown: London, United Kingdom
High School: Private school, 164 students in graduating class
Ethnicity: White and Black
Gender: Female
GPA: 4.9 out of 5.0
SAT: Reading 800, Math 800, Writing 800
ACT: n/a
SAT Subject Tests Taken: Mathematics Level 2, Chemistry, French
Extracurriculars: Editor in chief and founder of school newspaper, varsity girls Swim captain, musician (oboe and piano), Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award participant
Awards: Oboe ABRSM Performance Diploma, ACS Cobham Founder’s Award, Presidential Scholar semifinalist, National Honors Society, IB Diploma
Major: Social Anthropology
Successful college admissions essay
Ten minutes before my orchestra and I were due to perform what would be my first symphony, our conductor called us into the wings of the stage for a pep talk. He told us how hard we had all worked, and I could tell that he was struggling to say something that would truly inspire a group of excited twelve and thirteen year olds. After about six minutes of clichés, he looked at his watch and hurriedly delivered his closing line: “One day, you’ll reach a point where you don’t get nervous anymore.”
A point where you don’t get nervous anymore.
That night, I embarked on a mission to find that point. I’ve performed at concert halls, churches, and venues all over the U.K. I’ve played as a soloist and as part of an ensemble to packed audiences. I’ve auditioned for seats in orchestras and for conservatories. I’ve performed at examinations on three different instruments. And yet, this point eludes me, the point at which I no longer feel my own anxiety, worries, and doubts about the performance I am about to give. I have yet to reach this magical and amazing place. And recently, I decided to stop looking.
I gave up my quest for this “point” during a concert with my orchestra. We were performing a piece by Debussy, one I had fallen in love with as soon as I played it. I was the first-chair oboist, and toward the end of the piece is an oboe solo; completely exposed, extremely difficult to play, and powerful enough to render the entire performance either incredible or mediocre. Needless to say, I was so nervous that I was sure that members of the audience could hear my frantic breathing onstage as we drew closer to the solo, measure by measure. As I took a breath to begin playing, I closed my eyes and thought of all hours I had practiced, all tiny details I needed to remember while playing, all of the amazing performances I had heard. I thought of how transcendent and haunting I wanted it to sound, how I wanted every member of the audience to freeze and just listen. And I played it. Every note sounded exactly as I imagined it, and every pitch released another burst of adrenaline in my body. As the solo came to a close, the entire orchestra launched into the finale, filling the concert hall with a sound so rich and powerful I felt that I was going to burst. As I sustained the last note of the piece with the 80 other musicians on stage, I thought, “Why would you ever want to reach a point without nerves, when overcoming nervousness delivers so much?”
I stopped looking for a place without anxiety because I realized that this “point” was really just code for a place of apathy. I thought I was looking for a state of being in which I would be entirely professional and calm, but I discovered that it is the on-edge feelings and challenges that sharpen me and make my performance worthwhile, and the wide range of emotions that make a performance incredible. I am convinced that this is true of life in general, and whether I’m swimming in a race, completely in tune with my environment, taking a test where I feel confident and prepared, or playing my instruments in performance; I never forget that I am in a race, an exam, or a performance, and the result reflects hours of preparation and hard work. In music and in life it is important to recognize and remember that while a place of serenity and competence seems appealing, to reach it would render every aspect of life mundane, numb, and ordinary. By contrast, pushing oneself to do better, to play better, to be better makes hard-earned accomplishments and experiences memorable. And if the price for excellence is a little anxiety, I am more than willing to pay it.
REVIEW
The biggest strength of Esme’s essay is its acknowledgment and acceptance of her vulnerabilities. Namely, her nervousness. She confounds the reader’s first impressions by shifting the focus of her essay to the importance of that very nervous feeling she initially feared. By tracing the evolution of her feelings toward nervousness using a single dynamic example (her solo), Esme takes the reader on the journey with her, thus creating a connection with the reader.
By centering her discussion of her musical accomplishment around the theme of nervousness, Esme avoids a common mistake among college essay writers. Oftentimes, high school seniors are tempted to merely rehash their résumé in their application essays, but successful essays, like Esme’s, drill deep into one accomplishment. Through it, we get concrete examples of her industriousness (those “hours of preparation and hard work” before the oboe solo) and her artistic sensibilities. In this way, she follows the first rule uttered by almost every writing teacher: Show, don’t tell.
Esme’s essay does three things well: it charts a progression (a quest to avoid nervousness turns into a sort of reverence for it), it takes the reader along for that progression using vivid narrative, and it illustrates her musical passion without being obvious about it.
From 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays, 5th Edition edited by the Staff of the Harvard Crimson. Copyright (c) 2017 by the authors and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Publishing Group.
