College Essay係列（四十八）：2024 哈佛成功文書（3）

第三篇，Michelle 的《Fish out of Water》

Fish Out of Water:

idiom. a person who is in an unnatural environment; completely out of place.

When I was ten, my dad told me we were moving to somewhere called "Eely-noise." The screen flashed blue as he scrolled through 6000 miles of water on Google Earth to find our new home. Swipe, swipe, swipe, and there it was: Illinois, as I later learned.

Moving to America was like going from freshwater into saltwater. Not only did my mom complain that American food was too salty, but I was helplessly caught in an estuary of languages, swept by daunting tides of tenses, articles, and homonyms. It’s not a surprise that I developed an intense, breathless kind of thirst for what I now realize is my voice and self-expression.

This made sense because the only background I had in English was “Konglish”--an unhealthy hybrid of Korean and English--and broken phrases I picked up from SpongeBob. As soon as I stepped into my first class in America, I realized the gravity of the situation: I had to resort to clumsy pantomimes, or what I euphemistically called body language, to convey the simplest messages. School became an unending game of pictionary.

Amid the dizzying pool of vowels and phonemes and idioms (why does spilling beans end friendships?), the only thing that made sense was pictures and diagrams. Necessarily, I soon became interested in biology as its textbook had the highest picture-to-text ratio. Although I didn’t understand all the ant-like captions, the colorful diagrams were enough to catch my illiterate attention: a green ball of chyme rolling down the digestive tract, the rotor of the ATP synthase spinning like a waterwheel. Biology drew me with its ELL-friendliness and never let go.

I later learned in biology that when a freshwater fish goes in saltwater, it osmoregulates--it drinks a lot of water and urinates less. This used to hold true for my school day, when I constantly chugged water to fill awkward silences and lubricate my tongue to form better vowels. This habit in turn became a test of English-speaking and bladder control: I constantly missed the timing to go to the bathroom by worrying about how to ask. The only times I could express myself were through my fingers, between the pages of Debussy and under my pencil tip. To fulfill my need for self-expression and communication, I took up classical music, visual art, and later, creative writing. To this day, I will never forget the ineffable excitement when I delivered a concerto, finished a sculpture, and found beautiful words that I could not pronounce. If biology helped me understand, art helped me be understood.

There’s something human, empathetic, even redemptive about both art and biology. While they helped me reconcile with English and my new home, their power to connect and heal people is much bigger than my example alone. In college and beyond, I want to pay them forward, whether by dedicating myself to scientific research, performing in benefit concerts, or simply sharing the beauty of the arts. Sometimes, language feels slippery like fish on my tongue. But knowing that there are things that transcend language grounds and inspires me. English seeped into my tongue eventually, but I still pursue biology and arts with the same, perhaps universal, exigency and sincerity: to understand and to be understood.

Over the years, I have come to acknowledge and adore my inner fish, that confused, tongue-twisted and home-sick ELL kid from the other side of the world, which will forever coexist within me. And I’ve forgiven English, although I still can’t pronounce words like “rural,” because it gifted me with new passions to look forward to every day. Now, when I see kids with the same breathless look that I used to have gasping for home water, Don’t worry, I want to tell them.

You’ll find your water.

 

讀到移民經曆的主題，你肯定跟我一樣想到的是Crassandra Hsiao的《English in Our House》。

必須說，移民主題被人寫得爛了，很難寫出具有個性化的好文書來。這一篇也是以語言困難為切入點，但不足的是前麵分三段、128 words的introduction顯得太長了。這個部分有一個"Eely-noise"，是一處很好的表達主題的細節。它是Illinois的錯誤發音，還可以給結尾做呼應。

對了，以一個dictionary entry做開場的寫法，顯得老套了點。不免讓讀者覺得開篇hook不足。

進入的英語語言障礙的第四段，以“konglish” 和 “pictionary” 來描述這個主題元素，雖然很通俗易懂，但是缺乏形象畫麵感，就不如《English in Our House》裏麵的In our house, snake is snack。這就讓在後麵結尾處總算出來的一個“rural”不僅僅是太晚，而且沒有可呼應的元素。

後麵的Biology和Music，以及兩者之間的順滑過渡，撐起本篇文字的亮處。但是，故事從這兩個元素過渡到下一個college上的時候，卻留有一個沒填的坑，“their power to connect and heal people is much bigger than my example alone”。作者選擇隻讓biology music治愈自己融入美國的困難，卻沒有寫出足夠connect people的內容來。這樣寫，算是從自己經曆向到社會和升學概念的硬著陸吧。文書裏一定不要引進概念，既不描述，也不事證。

到最後兩段，文字上回到fish這個概念上，呼應篇首，總結全篇。但除了“rural”一詞，沒有新鮮的內容。這就不必再分出兩段來，而是一段簡短的文字就足夠結尾。拿兩段話、88 words來對應篇首，加上段首三段式introduction，這不是錦上添花，倒顯得畫蛇添足。而且“rural”跟開篇的"Eely-noise"不構成呼應。

Crassandra Hsiao的《English in Our House》是A+。這篇我就給個B+吧。