Watch: College Admission Essay Sample

There’s no way that it’s morning already. I hear footsteps running down the hall; eight hours ago this would have been considered typical, but now, it’s completely ludicrous. The door to my dorm room swings open with a nauseating kind of reality, shattering any possibilities that I might have been dreaming. It was her again, I knew it. What did she want now?

She pulled me out of my dreamland and into hers with an awkward transition, leaving me no room for reaction. She tugged me into the hall and dragged me toward the exit. “What is the problem?” I said to her irritably. At this hour, I was not concerned with tact. She continued to pull me outside as if it offered some sort of compromise, as if nature could possibly satisfy my current sleep deficiency. Then just as I was beginning to diagnose a lunatic, she pointed to the horizon and uttered a single word, “Watch.”

I squinted into the distance between a collection of trees and searched for some hidden wonder. In finding none, my gaze drifted back to her face, her delicate features softened in the morning air. She was seeing something I wasn’t, and I couldn’t believe I was missing it.

Suddenly, tension lifted on wings of heaven, and birds sang her song. Life began to blossom all around me, awakening with vigor and vitality. The moisture of morning cleared my senses, allowing my mind to fully participate. I looked out again, abruptly aware of a sea of color swelling over a vast land of promise. Sunlight reached outwards into every crack and crevice of the earth, slowly seeking out those in need of comfort, and offering its services with plentiful grace. I yearned for its warmth, but still hesitant to step out of the shadows, where I was safe. I searched her face once again for any human signs, but I found none. The genuine respect and pure awe that resonated around her lifted me to a place I had never before been.

This was the first time I really recognized her. I no longer saw her as some crazy girl who likes to get up early to see the sun rise, but a true appreciator of life, a connoisseur of beauty, a relic from days forgotten. As the year went on I developed a close friendship with her. Not necessarily taking her ways, but I listened, I observed, and I found knowledge.

She went to class every day just like the rest of us, but her attention seemed so much more intimate than any college student I had observed. She listened to our professor with a kind of reverence that completely floored me. She valued new and useful information with such respect and awe. She was engulfed in this trance as she absorbed every word, taking it in, deep down where definition resides. Then she came home and ate Milk Duds, religiously; life was too short to miss any kind of sweetness.

This was her, undeniable and yet so indefinable. I do not feel like a different person because of her influence, but much more aware. She took the time to see the world in all of its intricacies, finding every quirky detail and unexpected wonder. She expanded my views in the reverence of nature, intelligence, faith and character. She allowed me to learn from her abstract patterns, and develop some of my own. She was a dream from heaven and the best reality I have ever lived. She taught me the most important lesson I have ever learned: to look closer, to watch.