College Essay Journey
College Essay Reflection and Revision Process
For the first four days of my grade’s college essay boot camp, I changed my essay prompt a total of three times. I felt like none of the prompts fit me or let me expand my ideas to their full potential. I began to write an essay to a prompt that I wasn’t fully invested in, and from the beginning I wasn’t fully committed. When I finally found the prompt “describe the world you come from” I took three days to think of ways I would want to construct my thoughts and put them onto paper. I wanted to talk about a part of myself that no one knew about, something that would surprise people. At first, my ideas were choppy, unfinished, and I lacked a definitive conclusion. I knew exactly what I wanted to say, but not how I wanted to say it in a way so that it made an impact. I didn’t describe my experiences fully and after doing the first round of peer critiques most of my suggestions from others were to add in more of a descriptive element. Slowly but surely, I used the powerful emotion of my story to stand out the most, and sentences like, “The tribe didn’t believe in covering mother nature.” Turned into, “The tribe didn’t believe in covering mother Earth (key-kiah-weh-e-khwe), she still hung her laundry outside on a line, and cooked her bread in a handmade pueblo style oven.” I was able to add a strong personal touch which made my entire piece more appealing to readers; and in the end I was very proud of what I had created.
For the first four days of my grade’s college essay boot camp, I changed my essay prompt a total of three times. I felt like none of the prompts fit me or let me expand my ideas to their full potential. I began to write an essay to a prompt that I wasn’t fully invested in, and from the beginning I wasn’t fully committed. When I finally found the prompt “describe the world you come from” I took three days to think of ways I would want to construct my thoughts and put them onto paper. I wanted to talk about a part of myself that no one knew about, something that would surprise people. At first, my ideas were choppy, unfinished, and I lacked a definitive conclusion. I knew exactly what I wanted to say, but not how I wanted to say it in a way so that it made an impact. I didn’t describe my experiences fully and after doing the first round of peer critiques most of my suggestions from others were to add in more of a descriptive element. Slowly but surely, I used the powerful emotion of my story to stand out the most, and sentences like, “The tribe didn’t believe in covering mother nature.” Turned into, “The tribe didn’t believe in covering mother Earth (key-kiah-weh-e-khwe), she still hung her laundry outside on a line, and cooked her bread in a handmade pueblo style oven.” I was able to add a strong personal touch which made my entire piece more appealing to readers; and in the end I was very proud of what I had created.
Word Count: 649
Tiwa is a dying language. My earliest memory of speaking it was while sitting on the turquoise sink in my grandmother's pueblo style house on the outskirts of Albuquerque. She’d lived in that house her whole life, with eight other siblings. The roads were never paved because the tribe didn’t believe in covering mother Earth (key-kiah-weh-e-khwe), she still hung her laundry outside on a line, and cooked her bread in a handmade pueblo style oven. My grandmother brushed and braided my hair while reciting words back to me, asking what each one meant in Tiwa; although it remains an unwritten language I was proud when I learned to form small sentences. She explained to me how crucial it was for me to understand her language. Because with only 1,600 native speakers left, soon no one will remember how.
Eleven years later, my mind draws a blank. Slowly the other half of my identity has drifted away. I stopped visiting the reservation I spent my summers in, I stopped attending tribal dances, and I wasn’t proud of losing touch after so many years. I began to wonder what went so wrong. Even when my grandmother urged me to visit, it always seemed as if life got in the way and it was never the right time. Part of me was afraid to reconnect with my indigenous roots because whenever I was eager to bring it up people would tell me I “didn’t look native.” or ask if I was “sure that I was native.” And on certain occasions, question if my mom was my own mom. Overtime, I began to believe them, afraid to recognize and represent a side of myself that was so dear to my heart.
It wasn’t until recent weeks when I got a phone call from my grandmother late one night that I made the internal choice to try again, and in some sense, start over. My heart raced with expectancy. Her voice shaky on the other end as she asked if I would be willing to “re-sign” my membership to my tribe, visit the tribal school during the summers again and help give small tours like I used to. I could hear the love and pride in her tone as she brought to my attention that they were teaching more tribal children the language, and she grew even more enthusiastic when I let her know I wanted to re-learn what I had forgotten. I was thrilled to seek out what I had missed, to come back to that once so familiar ground. I was motivated by pure curiosity to circle back to something I knew deep down I didn’t want to let go of so quickly. I felt as if my life had made a full loop back to the beginning, and I knew that this time I was ready to take responsibility for who I am and not be afraid to make it known.
I recall short memories from days long ago when I would sit at my aunts kitchen table listening to her and my grandmother speak to each other, the way they laughed and the way their eyes lit up during each conversation created a type of a connection that you can’t create anywhere else. Their culture and irreplaceable language was what kept them together through so many years, and I wanted to be the one to carry on that tradition when they could not.
The life I had lived for those eleven years after sitting on that sink took me away from feeling like I belonged in my own family, the stresses of life outside that pueblo house and instead behind a white picket fence led me to forget who I was, yet led me back to the person I want to be. Forever using language to describe the world I come from is the biggest power I can possess.
Tiwa is a dying language. My earliest memory of speaking it was while sitting on the turquoise sink in my grandmother's pueblo style house on the outskirts of Albuquerque. She’d lived in that house her whole life, with eight other siblings. The roads were never paved because the tribe didn’t believe in covering mother Earth (key-kiah-weh-e-khwe), she still hung her laundry outside on a line, and cooked her bread in a handmade pueblo style oven. My grandmother brushed and braided my hair while reciting words back to me, asking what each one meant in Tiwa; although it remains an unwritten language I was proud when I learned to form small sentences. She explained to me how crucial it was for me to understand her language. Because with only 1,600 native speakers left, soon no one will remember how.
Eleven years later, my mind draws a blank. Slowly the other half of my identity has drifted away. I stopped visiting the reservation I spent my summers in, I stopped attending tribal dances, and I wasn’t proud of losing touch after so many years. I began to wonder what went so wrong. Even when my grandmother urged me to visit, it always seemed as if life got in the way and it was never the right time. Part of me was afraid to reconnect with my indigenous roots because whenever I was eager to bring it up people would tell me I “didn’t look native.” or ask if I was “sure that I was native.” And on certain occasions, question if my mom was my own mom. Overtime, I began to believe them, afraid to recognize and represent a side of myself that was so dear to my heart.
It wasn’t until recent weeks when I got a phone call from my grandmother late one night that I made the internal choice to try again, and in some sense, start over. My heart raced with expectancy. Her voice shaky on the other end as she asked if I would be willing to “re-sign” my membership to my tribe, visit the tribal school during the summers again and help give small tours like I used to. I could hear the love and pride in her tone as she brought to my attention that they were teaching more tribal children the language, and she grew even more enthusiastic when I let her know I wanted to re-learn what I had forgotten. I was thrilled to seek out what I had missed, to come back to that once so familiar ground. I was motivated by pure curiosity to circle back to something I knew deep down I didn’t want to let go of so quickly. I felt as if my life had made a full loop back to the beginning, and I knew that this time I was ready to take responsibility for who I am and not be afraid to make it known.
I recall short memories from days long ago when I would sit at my aunts kitchen table listening to her and my grandmother speak to each other, the way they laughed and the way their eyes lit up during each conversation created a type of a connection that you can’t create anywhere else. Their culture and irreplaceable language was what kept them together through so many years, and I wanted to be the one to carry on that tradition when they could not.
The life I had lived for those eleven years after sitting on that sink took me away from feeling like I belonged in my own family, the stresses of life outside that pueblo house and instead behind a white picket fence led me to forget who I was, yet led me back to the person I want to be. Forever using language to describe the world I come from is the biggest power I can possess.