Essay
I am going back to school, finally, after two years of flitting from job to job. Hopefully this fall. I spent the last week and a half in hell getting my applications together and calling scholarship people begging for money, getting my transcripts, SAT scores, writing essays, the works. Who knew I could actually be responsible and all that crap? But it's all in, and on time and everything. Should I get accepted, I'll tell you about the school. But for now, I'll just share with you my personal essay.
Personal Essay: All applicants must submit a personal essay. Tell us something about yourself that isn’t apparent from your academic record. If you experienced something that affected your academic performance, tell us about it. This is your chance to sell yourself to us.
"I gave my books their own room. Then they demanded the house."
So reads one of my favorite buttons in the world, if only because of how very true it is. Books breed as nothing else in existence can. For where is one's will so weak as in the bookstore? Bibliophilia is addictive. My shelves overflow with books on a wide and eclectic variety of subjects: mythology, physics, biblical reference, history, Judaica, novels, and numerous other topics. Then there are my prized antiquities. And, of course, the piles of books next to the overstuffed shelves and the piles in the closet, not to mention the piles of boxes stacked on top of the shelves. Still more are in storage, and steady streams of new books are always gracing my collections.
Books are renowned for their ability to take the reader to far off lands with the turn of a page. Be they a fantasy novel, a coffee table book about the wilds of Africa, or a treatise detailing Caesar's campaigns in Gaul, books have been transporting people to exotic and mundane times and places for thousands of years.
This does, however, pose an interesting question. How much can books give you? No matter how many books about dragon slaying a person may have read, I would still place my wager on the dragon in any encounter in which a hopeful slayer who lacks practical training might engage. Reading about a sandstorm does not prepare a person for the sting of the sands on their skin or exactly how instinctual it is to throw your arm up in front of your face to shield your eyes.
It occurred to me as I sat huddled on a roadside, pouring my soul onto a yellow pad, that there really was nothing like actually being there. I contemplated this as I sat writing my essay in that sandstorm. The currents of sand whipping past obscured the mountains on either side of the valley. I realized that I was experiencing a moment of pure and complete joy. Complete serenity. I felt at one with the world despite the destructive storm swirling around me. The sand did not bother me at all; it was hitting my back. I was safe.
That essay was one of the most potent pieces of writing I ever turned out. It took the force of the storm and transformed the wind and sand into words and structure. I now wonder how the essay would have turned out if I had been writing it sitting safely across the world, having never experienced it. Powerful, I'm sure; I have a vivid imagination. But, as it turned out, I was not snug in my parents' home or in any of the familiar places of my childhood; I was sitting deep in the Israeli desert, where I was living at the time. The piece became a force of nature of black ink and yellow paper. Someone else would read it and almost understand what the experience had been like.
As for me, I was content to finish my essay and quietly walk back into the gates of the kibbutz to tuck my pad away in my house, not thinking of books or writings for the time being. There was, after all, work to be done and life to be lived. The time for living on the page had passed. Was that not, after all, what I was doing in the middle of a desert so far from my place of birth?
I entered that desert a child. True, I had traveled some already. Born and bred in New York, I had already finished out my schooling in the International School of Aruba. Aruba brought me out of my infancy. It gave me a more complete world view and showed me what I had been blind to in my sheltered universe of Long Island. There was a world community out there, and the people in it were not just funny foreigners that had the bad taste not to be American. People that spoke Spanish, Papiamento, or Dutch as their first language were just as highly educated as people that spoke English. Still, life in Aruba didn't show me everything. I needed more.
When I graduated high school, I signed up at Kibbutz Lotan in the Arava Valley for a program called the Green Apprenticeship. I worked in an organic garden while learning the concepts of organic gardening and alternative building. Workdays started as soon as the dark broke enough to see where you were going, six days a week. I watched the sun rise daily from the garden over the Edom Mountains, pausing from my work long enough each day to watch it come up over the horizon and give a prayer.
The sense of community was astounding. Men and women from many countries, from Japan, from Korea, from South Africa, Germany, Holland, France, England, the United States, Brazil, from Mexico, came together as friends and equals. Somehow, it no longer mattered who we were, where we came from, where we were going. There was work to be done; we all did it. There were cold, lonely nights to be passed; we passed them together in laughter on back porches, in living rooms, out on the dunes, on roofs, around fires-anywhere. It only mattered that we were there then, and that was enough. No one was ever alone, no matter how many thousands of miles from home and family they might have been.
After three months, I moved to Kibbutz Yotvata, twelve kilometers south in the same valley. I studied Hebrew there in an Ulpan, working and studying on alternate days. The work was far more varied. The work sheet was posted in the dining hall, and anything at all could show up next to your name, from painting fences to working in the onion packing house to working in the dairy factory which turns out the famed chocolate milk. I learned more at Kibbutz Yotvata just by living than anything else.
What have I learned? The worse your job, the harder it is to prove that you are legitimately ill. Onion dust is hallucinogenic when breathed in large quantities such as exist in packing houses. It is possible to continue to work when, although legitimately ill from onion dust one has breathed in large quantities such as exist in packing houses, the clinic fails to believe you. Dairy factories, loud as they are, and though they have earplugs for the workers, seem downright quiet after having worked three solid months in an onion packing house. Americans cannot, on their first try, cut tomatoes small enough for Israelis. Laundry houses are good places to work. So are gardens and agricultural fields. If, however, you are working on potato combine tractors at night, don't eat dinner before getting on one, or your dinner will become fertilizer for the potatoes quickly. Those combines move quickly.
People are messy in dining halls. Clean up after yourself in the dining hall. People work there; they shouldn't have to clean up after you. Painting fences is harder than it looks, especially if you have a partner that doesn't care how good a job he does. When you work in a service station, and a bus pulls in, be ready for a crowd. Make sure the tables are clean, the chairs are pushed in, and the napkin dispensers are arranged facing the door. Appearances are everything. If a place looks neat, people will think much more highly of it. It doesn't matter if you're a five star restaurant or a roadside service station. Keep your pride.
Of course, I also learned things that are more conventional. I had a roommate that spoke only Russian, and I spoke only English. By the end of five months, we could communicate with each other in Hebrew. It was amazing for me to consider that other languages could really be used for actual communication instead of a kind of game that one plays in school to get grades. I'd done it in small measures in Aruba, but people generally speak English there. Many of the other Ulpanists were Russian and did not. Some of the people I worked with spoke only Hebrew. Within five short months, this ceased to be a problem.
I still have many of my writings from those days. They are scattered between the books on my shelves. The essay from the sandstorm? The pun and cliché are unavoidable at this stage. It's been lost to the sands of time. I don't mind. The essay isn't what matters anymore. It's having written it. That day will be burned into my memory forever. There is something about living a powerful moment that will always far surpass reading a powerful book every time.
What does this mean? Does this mean that my shelves accumulate not only books but also dust? Of course not. I still collect and read avidly. No, this does not mean I've given up on my books at all. The worlds within them are still invaluable to me. The escape, even, is welcome when I am tired or overly stressed. It is the same with anyone who reads, I would imagine. In the end, what did I learn? I learned that books are wonderful for learning, for entertainment, and for vicarious adventures. Nevertheless, it is even more important to venture out into the world, gain your own experiences, and create your own life story. And if you wish to write about it, so much the better.
Personal Essay: All applicants must submit a personal essay. Tell us something about yourself that isn’t apparent from your academic record. If you experienced something that affected your academic performance, tell us about it. This is your chance to sell yourself to us.
"I gave my books their own room. Then they demanded the house."
So reads one of my favorite buttons in the world, if only because of how very true it is. Books breed as nothing else in existence can. For where is one's will so weak as in the bookstore? Bibliophilia is addictive. My shelves overflow with books on a wide and eclectic variety of subjects: mythology, physics, biblical reference, history, Judaica, novels, and numerous other topics. Then there are my prized antiquities. And, of course, the piles of books next to the overstuffed shelves and the piles in the closet, not to mention the piles of boxes stacked on top of the shelves. Still more are in storage, and steady streams of new books are always gracing my collections.
Books are renowned for their ability to take the reader to far off lands with the turn of a page. Be they a fantasy novel, a coffee table book about the wilds of Africa, or a treatise detailing Caesar's campaigns in Gaul, books have been transporting people to exotic and mundane times and places for thousands of years.
This does, however, pose an interesting question. How much can books give you? No matter how many books about dragon slaying a person may have read, I would still place my wager on the dragon in any encounter in which a hopeful slayer who lacks practical training might engage. Reading about a sandstorm does not prepare a person for the sting of the sands on their skin or exactly how instinctual it is to throw your arm up in front of your face to shield your eyes.
It occurred to me as I sat huddled on a roadside, pouring my soul onto a yellow pad, that there really was nothing like actually being there. I contemplated this as I sat writing my essay in that sandstorm. The currents of sand whipping past obscured the mountains on either side of the valley. I realized that I was experiencing a moment of pure and complete joy. Complete serenity. I felt at one with the world despite the destructive storm swirling around me. The sand did not bother me at all; it was hitting my back. I was safe.
That essay was one of the most potent pieces of writing I ever turned out. It took the force of the storm and transformed the wind and sand into words and structure. I now wonder how the essay would have turned out if I had been writing it sitting safely across the world, having never experienced it. Powerful, I'm sure; I have a vivid imagination. But, as it turned out, I was not snug in my parents' home or in any of the familiar places of my childhood; I was sitting deep in the Israeli desert, where I was living at the time. The piece became a force of nature of black ink and yellow paper. Someone else would read it and almost understand what the experience had been like.
As for me, I was content to finish my essay and quietly walk back into the gates of the kibbutz to tuck my pad away in my house, not thinking of books or writings for the time being. There was, after all, work to be done and life to be lived. The time for living on the page had passed. Was that not, after all, what I was doing in the middle of a desert so far from my place of birth?
I entered that desert a child. True, I had traveled some already. Born and bred in New York, I had already finished out my schooling in the International School of Aruba. Aruba brought me out of my infancy. It gave me a more complete world view and showed me what I had been blind to in my sheltered universe of Long Island. There was a world community out there, and the people in it were not just funny foreigners that had the bad taste not to be American. People that spoke Spanish, Papiamento, or Dutch as their first language were just as highly educated as people that spoke English. Still, life in Aruba didn't show me everything. I needed more.
When I graduated high school, I signed up at Kibbutz Lotan in the Arava Valley for a program called the Green Apprenticeship. I worked in an organic garden while learning the concepts of organic gardening and alternative building. Workdays started as soon as the dark broke enough to see where you were going, six days a week. I watched the sun rise daily from the garden over the Edom Mountains, pausing from my work long enough each day to watch it come up over the horizon and give a prayer.
The sense of community was astounding. Men and women from many countries, from Japan, from Korea, from South Africa, Germany, Holland, France, England, the United States, Brazil, from Mexico, came together as friends and equals. Somehow, it no longer mattered who we were, where we came from, where we were going. There was work to be done; we all did it. There were cold, lonely nights to be passed; we passed them together in laughter on back porches, in living rooms, out on the dunes, on roofs, around fires-anywhere. It only mattered that we were there then, and that was enough. No one was ever alone, no matter how many thousands of miles from home and family they might have been.
After three months, I moved to Kibbutz Yotvata, twelve kilometers south in the same valley. I studied Hebrew there in an Ulpan, working and studying on alternate days. The work was far more varied. The work sheet was posted in the dining hall, and anything at all could show up next to your name, from painting fences to working in the onion packing house to working in the dairy factory which turns out the famed chocolate milk. I learned more at Kibbutz Yotvata just by living than anything else.
What have I learned? The worse your job, the harder it is to prove that you are legitimately ill. Onion dust is hallucinogenic when breathed in large quantities such as exist in packing houses. It is possible to continue to work when, although legitimately ill from onion dust one has breathed in large quantities such as exist in packing houses, the clinic fails to believe you. Dairy factories, loud as they are, and though they have earplugs for the workers, seem downright quiet after having worked three solid months in an onion packing house. Americans cannot, on their first try, cut tomatoes small enough for Israelis. Laundry houses are good places to work. So are gardens and agricultural fields. If, however, you are working on potato combine tractors at night, don't eat dinner before getting on one, or your dinner will become fertilizer for the potatoes quickly. Those combines move quickly.
People are messy in dining halls. Clean up after yourself in the dining hall. People work there; they shouldn't have to clean up after you. Painting fences is harder than it looks, especially if you have a partner that doesn't care how good a job he does. When you work in a service station, and a bus pulls in, be ready for a crowd. Make sure the tables are clean, the chairs are pushed in, and the napkin dispensers are arranged facing the door. Appearances are everything. If a place looks neat, people will think much more highly of it. It doesn't matter if you're a five star restaurant or a roadside service station. Keep your pride.
Of course, I also learned things that are more conventional. I had a roommate that spoke only Russian, and I spoke only English. By the end of five months, we could communicate with each other in Hebrew. It was amazing for me to consider that other languages could really be used for actual communication instead of a kind of game that one plays in school to get grades. I'd done it in small measures in Aruba, but people generally speak English there. Many of the other Ulpanists were Russian and did not. Some of the people I worked with spoke only Hebrew. Within five short months, this ceased to be a problem.
I still have many of my writings from those days. They are scattered between the books on my shelves. The essay from the sandstorm? The pun and cliché are unavoidable at this stage. It's been lost to the sands of time. I don't mind. The essay isn't what matters anymore. It's having written it. That day will be burned into my memory forever. There is something about living a powerful moment that will always far surpass reading a powerful book every time.
What does this mean? Does this mean that my shelves accumulate not only books but also dust? Of course not. I still collect and read avidly. No, this does not mean I've given up on my books at all. The worlds within them are still invaluable to me. The escape, even, is welcome when I am tired or overly stressed. It is the same with anyone who reads, I would imagine. In the end, what did I learn? I learned that books are wonderful for learning, for entertainment, and for vicarious adventures. Nevertheless, it is even more important to venture out into the world, gain your own experiences, and create your own life story. And if you wish to write about it, so much the better.