College Essay Pointers
Prompt: Diversity of all kinds is important to enriching the educational experience at Howard University. Please share with us anything in your background or lived experience that has shaped your perspectives and how that would contribute to the classroom and community at Howard. (500 words max)
So, the music never stopped, but the lights on the silhouette went dark. Backstage staff were scrambling back and forth. Ms. Tawanna was wrestling with the spotlight we had found for $12.99 at Family Dollar, while Mr. Carlos tried to push the actors in the next scene on stage early. In the audience were family, friends, teachers, neighbors, and Neighborhood Christian Centers’ staff, all watching and waiting in that five-second timeframe during the “2 Much Pressure” production centered around breaking generational cycles. These performers, who I had helped and worked alongside all throughout the 90-degree Memphis summer, came from various circumstances and at-risk homes. They had trained for two weeks plus Saturdays to dance their hearts out to Jonathan Reynolds' music in this one moment in-between scenes. So, I reached for the white PVC pipes used as posts to hold up the white “drapery” that was essentially a white bed sheet from a comforter set, and I pulled down the assembly.
During our extended spring break starting in 2020, I lost the one environment where I felt like myself. I lost my routine, which, at the time, was to learn, play football, run track, talk to my friends, participate in drama club, go to church, and confide in my teachers. I struggled to recognize myself and who I was. I just so happen to find a ripped, wet, and stepped-on flyer for the program. Through the Neighborhood Christian Center (NCC), I was surrounded every day by people who challenged me to remember who I was. Even more importantly, what I stood for. It was through acting, singing, and dancing that I began to rebuild the confidence that I had lost. The same confidence that I wielded in that moment.
Years later, I realized that the sheet represented something that I and so many people had experienced before; the barriers that separate people from who they are meant to become. The white sheet was only see-through when light hit it; once that light went away, the sheet blocked my peers, who were dancing behind it, from portraying their message. The irony is that looking back on that moment, I was not the person who should have made that decision, but it turned out to be the right one. To backstage staff and actors, the decision might have appeared to be reckless. But in those five seconds, I was not thinking about the sheet; I was thinking about the barrier it represented. We all knew the dance through watching in rehearsal and started to perform it then and there. After that barrier was removed, we danced for the remaining three minutes of "Pressure" by Jonathan Reynolds, and the crowd never knew the difference.
Wherever I end up for college, I hope to be the student who notices when the light goes out. I hope to utilize the resources at the university to decisively remove barriers. I will recognize the challenges, unite around finding a solution, and continue to move forward.