文字的魔力:移民女孩因?yàn)橐黄臅玫剿刑傩5匿浫⊥ㄖ獣?/p>
所有的申請(qǐng)文書,高中也好,大學(xué)也好,甚至醫(yī)學(xué)院也罷,都是要講你的故事,展示你GPA,SAT,MCAT和簡(jiǎn)歷之外的自己。怎么描繪,而不是說教,How to show,Not tell,那才是關(guān)鍵。
這篇文書精煉老道,講了家世,價(jià)值觀,也談了自己的成長(zhǎng)。一個(gè)聰明,活躍,倔強(qiáng)而又充滿同情心的亞裔女孩躍然紙上。
一個(gè)17歲的名叫Cassandra Hsiao的女孩,今年難以令人置信地拿到了全部8個(gè)藤校的錄取通知書。
Cassandra現(xiàn)在住在南加州,收到了哈佛,普林斯頓,耶魯,達(dá)特茅斯,布朗,哥倫比亞,康奈爾和賓夕法尼亞大學(xué)的全部藤校錄取,現(xiàn)在正面臨著世界上最幸福的煩惱 – 要拒絕哪些世界上最棒的大學(xué)呢?
Cassandra 5歲從馬來西亞移民美國(guó),是第一代移民。她的簡(jiǎn)歷無與倫比,但她這篇關(guān)于學(xué)英語(yǔ)的文書獲得了所有招生官的青睞。
說到她不得了的簡(jiǎn)歷:她的學(xué)分績(jī)GPA 有4.67,SAT 是1540 . 她是學(xué)校里兩個(gè)學(xué)生會(huì)主席之一,校雜志的主編,而且在自己的社區(qū)里也非常活躍。
除了學(xué)習(xí)好之外,Cassandra 作為記者在紅毯上采訪電影明星,參加記者招待會(huì),她還親自采訪過在美國(guó)家喻戶曉的大明星Captain America himself, Chris Evans!
除了被所有藤校都錄取了之外,Cassandra 同時(shí)也被斯坦福,西北大學(xué),約翰霍普金斯,南加州大學(xué),紐約大學(xué),以及加州大學(xué)系里面的很多名校錄取。
而下面這篇文書,是她取得如此斐然結(jié)果的最根本原因。請(qǐng)大家再次體會(huì)文字的魔力。
In our house, English is not English. Not in the phonetic sense, like short a is for apple, but rather in the pronunciation – in our house, snake is snack. Words do not roll off our tongues correctly – yet I, who was pulled out of class to meet with language specialists, and my mother from Malaysia, who pronounces film as flim, understand each other perfectly.
In our house, there is no difference between cast and cash, which was why at a church retreat, people made fun of me for “cashing out demons.” I did not realize the glaring difference between the two Englishes until my teacher corrected my pronunciations of hammock, ladle, and siphon. Classmates laughed because I pronounce accept as except, success as sussess. I was in the Creative Writing conservatory, and yet words failed me when I needed them most.
Suddenly, understanding flower is flour wasn’t enough. I rejected the English that had never seemed broken before, a language that had raised me and taught me everything I knew. Everybody else’s parents spoke with accents smarting of Ph.D.s and university teaching positions. So why couldn’t mine?
My mother spread her sunbaked hands and said, “This is where I came from,” spinning a tale with the English she had taught herself.
When my mother moved from her village to a town in Malaysia, she had to learn a brand new language in middle school: English. In a time when humiliation was encouraged, my mother was defenseless against the cruel words spewing from the teacher, who criticized her paper in front of the class. When she began to cry, the class president stood up and said, “That’s enough.”
“Be like that class president,” my mother said with tears in her eyes. The class president took her under her wing and patiently mended my mother’s strands of language. “She stood up for the weak and used her words to fight back.”
We were both crying now. My mother asked me to teach her proper English so old white ladies at Target wouldn’t laugh at her pronunciation. It has not been easy. There is a measure of guilt when I sew her letters together. Long vowels, double consonants — I am still learning myself. Sometimes I let the brokenness slide to spare her pride but perhaps I have hurt her more to spare mine.
As my mother’s vocabulary began to grow, I mended my own English.Through performing poetry in front of 3000 at my school’s Season Finale event, interviewing people from all walks of life, and writing stories for the stage, I stand against ignorance and become a voice for the homeless, the refugees, the ignored. With my words I fight against jeers pelted at an old Asian street performer on a New York subway. My mother’s eyes are reflected in underprivileged ESL children who have so many stories to tell but do not know how. I fill them with words as they take needle and thread to make a tapestry.
In our house, there is beauty in the way we speak to each other. In our house, language is not broken but rather bursting with emotion. We have built a house out of words. There are friendly snakes in the cupboard and snacks in the tank. It is a crooked house. It is a little messy. But this is where we have made our home.
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