College Essay Final Draft
Shattered glass, bullet holes and uprising: words associated with some of the music a teenager listens to. Baseball cards, Pokémon handhelds and Beanie Babies: childhood playthings forever linked with the memories sitting idly by in the back of most teenagers' minds. The kids I saw growing up on the English-speaking TV stations had baseball cards to play with, ones of their favorite players, rookie cards and first-editions, and listened to angst filled and rebellious music when they reached their teenage years.
By my fifth birthday, my older brother and I had accumulated two sizable bags full of bullet casings. There existed no rookie bullets, but Rebel bullets instead. No first-editions, but the last additions to a pedestrian's chest. Just like the American kids on TV collected baseball cards and Beanie Babies, Albanian ones at that time collected bullets, shrapnel, grenade pins, parts of landmines, and other pieces of used up ammunition. It is these lasting images that I have of my homeland of Albania during the fiery spring of 1997.
My father worked as the local high school's principal and physics professor and my mother as a veterinarian. Both were well educated and respected in the community for their morals. Like many other Albanians, they were accustomed to corruption and turmoil, having gone through decades of totalitarian communist regimes. The last straw, the one that convinced my family to seek a new light and move to an unfamiliar nation, came one day in the form of four heavily armed schoolchildren that treated their AK47s as toys. That day, our way home from school, my father and I were held at gunpoint, narrowly escaping with our lives. A year later, we fled to the airport in an ambulance with sirens blaring, to avoid being stopped.
The teary-eyed goodbyes and the nearly unbearable amount of cheek kissing and pinching from loved ones turned out to be difficult for me; my youthful self was somehow conscious of the significance of that morning. That ten hour journey remains vivid in my mind, the look of anticipation and fear in my mother's eyes and the look of hope in my father's when he would glance over at me. Eleven years have passed since that day, but the ramifications of it will last forever. For my brother and me, my parents left everything they loved: their family, their friends, and their jobs. From professor and doctor to cashier and dishwasher, they abandoned their respected statuses working two jobs each to provide me a path to success and happiness.
Life in the United States has provided wider horizons than I was destined for in Albania. Looking back on where I was eleven years ago, I realize that the opportunity that I have been given truly is unique. I have accomplished what my friends and family in Albania cannot. I traveled to Costa Rica to rescue endangered species, spent a majority of my free time at Harvard University learning from highly esteemed dignitaries, and most importantly received an education that makes this application possible.
Flash forward thirty years. The room is lit by the warm August sun, now half way up the sky. There are children in the green yard outside, chasing a retriever, playing with it- or a Beanie Baby, Pokémon handheld, or baseball cards for that matter. In the room, opposite the wall where the glass door slides to open up the house to the terrace, a telescope carelessly lays pointed East, toward Leo or Saturn perhaps, low on its tripod for its owner’s children to use later that night. The man can recall the sacrifices his parents made for him to be there, leaving all they knew, loved and felt comfortable with for his benefit. He tells his children to come in and get their bags ready for the first day of school tomorrow, knowing that they will be afforded the same opportunities as he.
By my fifth birthday, my older brother and I had accumulated two sizable bags full of bullet casings. There existed no rookie bullets, but Rebel bullets instead. No first-editions, but the last additions to a pedestrian's chest. Just like the American kids on TV collected baseball cards and Beanie Babies, Albanian ones at that time collected bullets, shrapnel, grenade pins, parts of landmines, and other pieces of used up ammunition. It is these lasting images that I have of my homeland of Albania during the fiery spring of 1997.
My father worked as the local high school's principal and physics professor and my mother as a veterinarian. Both were well educated and respected in the community for their morals. Like many other Albanians, they were accustomed to corruption and turmoil, having gone through decades of totalitarian communist regimes. The last straw, the one that convinced my family to seek a new light and move to an unfamiliar nation, came one day in the form of four heavily armed schoolchildren that treated their AK47s as toys. That day, our way home from school, my father and I were held at gunpoint, narrowly escaping with our lives. A year later, we fled to the airport in an ambulance with sirens blaring, to avoid being stopped.
The teary-eyed goodbyes and the nearly unbearable amount of cheek kissing and pinching from loved ones turned out to be difficult for me; my youthful self was somehow conscious of the significance of that morning. That ten hour journey remains vivid in my mind, the look of anticipation and fear in my mother's eyes and the look of hope in my father's when he would glance over at me. Eleven years have passed since that day, but the ramifications of it will last forever. For my brother and me, my parents left everything they loved: their family, their friends, and their jobs. From professor and doctor to cashier and dishwasher, they abandoned their respected statuses working two jobs each to provide me a path to success and happiness.
Life in the United States has provided wider horizons than I was destined for in Albania. Looking back on where I was eleven years ago, I realize that the opportunity that I have been given truly is unique. I have accomplished what my friends and family in Albania cannot. I traveled to Costa Rica to rescue endangered species, spent a majority of my free time at Harvard University learning from highly esteemed dignitaries, and most importantly received an education that makes this application possible.
Flash forward thirty years. The room is lit by the warm August sun, now half way up the sky. There are children in the green yard outside, chasing a retriever, playing with it- or a Beanie Baby, Pokémon handheld, or baseball cards for that matter. In the room, opposite the wall where the glass door slides to open up the house to the terrace, a telescope carelessly lays pointed East, toward Leo or Saturn perhaps, low on its tripod for its owner’s children to use later that night. The man can recall the sacrifices his parents made for him to be there, leaving all they knew, loved and felt comfortable with for his benefit. He tells his children to come in and get their bags ready for the first day of school tomorrow, knowing that they will be afforded the same opportunities as he.
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