Common App Essay Admitted to Columbia University Sarah ONeill

 In the yard of a house located on the edge of Shangshu, a woman with orangey hair gets ready to unclip undergarments that have been hanging in obedient undulations. All the while glancing out of her periphery —a girl clad in pink, me, aged five, seated on a stool, sewing together a pillow covered in snaking needlework. Pigtails flapping along with a nursery rhyme I’m whistling, in a split second, I sprint out and am gone, leaving her clouds of dust.

 

“Wild,” my aunt yells from the clothesline.

I was, indeed, wild.

Growing up with my aunt in rural China, I learned how to resuscitate certain ancient instincts that connected me to nature. Or, to put it simply, I played outside. Letting the vastness of bamboo forests drown out my laughter, letting muddy, unseeded fields devour my naked feet, letting golden waves of wheat stems caress my untroubled face, under a muted sky, my childish submergence into an untamed world exhausted me perfectly while energizing my spirit.

Years later, I found myself in the city, far from my roots, to attend a standard Chinese school. Standing on the balcony, I looked up to see a similar clothesline I’d see in my aunt’s yard in Shangsu. But it wasn’t the same. I wasn’t the same. My head was busied digesting rules, information, and math formulae; so much so that there was little time to be outside. City blocks dissolved amidst the traffic and bubbling neon lights. I could no longer run barefoot through the trees of our Anji.

Even though it took a little while, I slowly came to see that all the concrete, chalk, and steel could be as formative as the muddy paths of the country. They, too, could become a medium for recreation and a place to allow my instincts to run freely. By writing my stories and painting, I could construct topographies grander than any wilderness. I could set free any fear, misery, or love I had – running ever so primitively across the field of some unsealed canvas.

The more I had to memorize, the more experiments I had to run, the more artwork I had to study—the more I learned, the less boundaries there seemed to be. Xuan, a venerable painter, remarked on the purity of existence, pointing out the powerful sentiments of everyday surroundings that many of us may fail to see. Our fast-paced world does not seem to accommodate inspection. I, too, had become inattentive to my surroundings after my transition, absorbed in constantly meeting my responsibilities without understanding my motives, my perspective becoming limited until I began my art.  

When I proceeded to intensive studies of portraiture to capture the ephemeral expressions of my subjects, I reflected upon them from different perspectives. I moved from perception, to comprehension, to unlocking an emotional world. Through creating a series of self-portraits and of my family, I really “saw” my grandma, who sat by herself for hours in silence. What was going on beneath her peaceful visage? When my dad stopped eating and did his signature “thinker” gesture, what thoughts were distracting him? My enlightenment through art pushed me to see the finer details like a special word in literature or the tiny particles in a chemical reaction.

I also love that I can live out wild fancies through my art.  

I have returned to Shanghu on numerous occasions, where the hands of urbanization have now touched. Streets are newly paved and widened, some fields are contemporary condos. Still, I recognize the front yard immediately, not by its renovated appearance, but by the woman standing in it. A nest of lumpy, orange hair stacked against the fading sunlight. I have no idea how long we talked. I told her about school, showed her my paintings and snippets of writings, some stubbornly realistic, some saturated with spasms of emotions.

“Wild,” she says. Then, we both laugh.

Sarah ONeill Supreme Editing