College Essay係列（五十）：2024 哈佛成功文書（5）

前四篇分別是：

College Essay係列（四十六）：2024 哈佛成功文書（1）

College Essay係列（四十七）：2024 哈佛成功文書（2）

College Essay係列（四十八）：2024 哈佛成功文書（3）

College Essay係列（四十九）：2024 哈佛成功文書（4）

第五篇，Sarika 的《I, Too, Can Dance》

I was in love with the way the dainty pink mouse glided across the stage, her tutu twirling as she pirouetted and her rose-colored bow following the motion of her outstretched arms with every grand jeté.

I had always dreamed I would dance, and Angelina Ballerina made it seem so easy. There was something so freeing about the way she wove her body into the delicate threads of the Sugar Plum Fairy’s song each time she performed an arabesque. I longed for my whole being to melt into the magical melodies of music; I longed to enchant the world with my own stories; and I longed for the smile that glimmered on every dancer’s face.

At recess, my friends and I would improvise dances. But while they seemed well on their way to achieving ballerina status, my figure eights were more like zeroes and every attempt at spinning around left me feeling dizzy. Sometimes, I even ran over my friends’ toes. How could I share my stories with others if I managed to injure them with my wheelchair before the story even began?

I then tried piano, but my fingers stumbled across the keys in an uncoordinated staccato tap dance of sorts. I tried art, but the clumsiness of my brush left the canvas a colorful mess. I tried the recorder, but had Angelina existed in real life, my rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” would have frozen her in midair, with flute-like screeches tumbling through the air before ending in an awkward split and shattering the gossamer world the Sugar Plum Fairy had worked so hard to build.

For as long as I could remember, I’d also been fascinated by words, but I’d never explored writing until one day in fourth grade, the school librarian announced a poetry contest. That night, as I tried to sleep, ideas scampered through my head like Nutcracker mice awakening a sleeping Clara to a mystical new world. By morning, I had choreographed the mice to tell a winning story in verse about all the marvelous outer space factoids I knew.

Now, my pencil pirouettes perfect O’s on paper amidst sagas of doting mothers and evanescent lovers. The tip of my pen stipples the lines of my notebook with the tale of a father’s grief, like a ballerina tiptoeing en pointe; as the man finds solace in nature, the ink flows gracefully, and for a moment, it leaps off the page, as if reaching out to the heavens to embrace his daughter’s soul. Late at night, my fingers tap dance across the keys of my laptop, tap tap tapping an article about the latest breakthrough in cancer research—maybe LDCT scans or aneuploidy-targeted therapy could have saved the daughter’s life; a Spanish poem about the beauty of unspoken moments; and the story of a girl in a wheelchair who learned how to dance.

As the world sleeps, I lose myself in the cathartic cadences of fresh ink, bursting with stories to be told and melting into parched paper. I cobble together phrases until they spring off my tongue, as if the Sugar Plum Fairy herself has transformed the staccato rumblings of my brain into something legato and sweet. I weave my heart, my soul, my very being into my words as I read them out loud, until they become almost like a chant. With every rehearsal, I search for the perfect finale to complete my creation. When I finally find it, eyes dry with midnight-induced euphoria, I remember that night so many years ago when I discovered the magic of writing, and smile.

I may not dance across the stage like Angelina Ballerina, but I can dance across the page.

I, too, can dance.

開篇是一段PBS動畫片《Angelina Ballerina: The Next Steps》中的小粉鼠Angelina Ballerina的舞蹈。這對於熟悉的人來說，無論是看片長大的Gen Z，還是家裏有Gen Z 的父母，它的畫麵感十足。特別是讀到兩個法語詞，“pirouette” 和“jeté”，你們有沒有不明覺厲？在我發給文書班課的資料裏，就有這些精選的法語詞匯，用起來吧，像一個Elite English Writer。

第二段，故事發展到三個“I longed for”，讓讀者從narrative的文字中，感受到屏幕前的一個小女孩的舞蹈熏陶和渴望。第三段，作者的筆頭幹練地滑向故事的轉折點，wheelchair上的殘疾女孩向往舞蹈，這豈不是折磨嗎。第四段，換鋼琴來試試吧。連finger dance 也還是不行，作者還超有想象力的場景，即Angelina Ballerina freeze in midair來說明自己在鋼琴上的失敗。

第五段，Poetry Contest，進入寫作的主題。一夜的mice dream-about，激發出早晨的外空靈感，於是產生了作者的第一篇獲獎作品。第六段，作者沒有在成長史上耽擱筆墨，而是直接跳躍到現在，有文學創作，也有科學報道。段尾的三個分句，以從前的wheelchair女孩向往舞蹈入墨，把讀者拉回到開篇。期間沒有用到一個關聯詞，卻能把情節無縫銜接在一起，這筆法值得學習。

第七段，作者為自己的寫作興趣給出一個更有畫麵感的備注：靜夜思。舉頭望明月，低頭思胡桃仙子。給每一個故事創造一個完美的結局的時候，作者想到的還是四年級那夜發現寫作時的興奮。第八段， “I may not dance…but I dance…”一句總結，回顧全篇。從語法到內容的強烈對比，給讀者勾畫出一個殘疾女孩的精彩成長！

這篇的好處主要在於：1，結構緊湊，以內容而不是以關聯詞語完成前後的關聯；2，多次使用呼應，如mice、sugar plum fairy、Angelina Ballerina，不拘於篇首尾位置；3，形象化語言豐富，比如 “cadences of fresh ink”，同時還善於使用外來詞匯，“pirouette” “jeté”和 “en pointe”；4，首尾段簡捷幹練，在給讀者傳達價值上，毫不囉嗦。

說了這麽多，隻是難掩閱讀的快感而已。這篇我給出少有的A+。