College Essay係列（三十四）：芝大 爆款文書

芝大 2018 爆款文書

 

這篇想說的不尋常，是2018年的招生政策變革的芝大。

 

在頂尖美本裏，芝大率先Test Optional，就在那一年。那一年文書在申請中的位置大大提高，也因此在錄取中湧現出了不少好文書。

 

朽石君在以前的一篇談芝大supp的文章裏，專門引用了一篇應題“What's You Armor”的文書《Knocking Wood》。想看的可以進入博客列表，從曆史信息的目錄裏去尋找。

 

這一篇，我要講講另一篇今年才被從tiktok上爆款的文書，《Meep》。請大家先來讀讀這篇。

 

DISCUSS SOMETHING YOU LOVE BECAUSE ITS QUIRKS AND IMPERFECTION 

 

Meep

Anonymous, UChicago'22

 

When I was four years old, I fell entirely and inexplicably in love with a little carrot-nosed muppet by the name of Beaker. Perhaps it was the unruly nature of the bright orange fuzz on his head, or the courageous grace with which he took Dr. Bunsen's verbal abuse time and time again. but something about that muppet spoke to my Disney-worshiping, monster-fearing soul. My favorite thing about Beaker was his catchphrase, the monosyllable masterpiece "meep.”

 

Slowly but surely the phrase “meep" began to seep into my vocabulary. When my mother asked me if I had finished my broccoli and I didn't want to tell her that I had slipped it to the dog under the table, I answered “meep.” When my kindergarten teacher asked me if was the one who started that snowball fight, I answered ''meep." It was the perfectone-size-fits-all versatile phrase to cover all of my linguistic needs. While other staples of my childhood such as my Wizard Oz lunch box and American Girldolls eventually faded into memory, the word meep determinedly clung to my repertoire.

 

For those unfamiliar with the magic of meep, it might be easy to assume that it now retains a somewhat vestigial presence within my vernacular. Yet I can offer full assurance that the practice of meeping has much more use to me than my appendix the tip of my tailbone. Though my meeps may have evolved in what could be considered the early Cenozoic era of my life, they still retain a vital place within my daily dialect.

 

I can't help but mutter a meep when I'm on a paused chair lift near the top of the mountain, the wind swinging me back and forth like a loose tooth about to fall out. When I'm surrounded by grumpy, sleep-deprived friends during AP exam season, there is no better way to send everyone into fits of laughter than with a well-placed meep. In these moments I know that there is no form of human expression--no word. no gesticulation, no fake cough, no interpretive dance--that could better capture the feeling I wish to convey than meep.

 

For most of my life I have thought of meep as my own bizarre personal quirk. Then last year in AP physics I met a girl who “murps."  From the first moment we heard each other muller our meaningless mantras we became instant friends. Every day we would trade meeps and murps back and forth while working in class, our teacher shaking his head with bewildered amusement as we determinedly found a way to make our thirteen-step centripetal force problems subject to endless giggles.

 

It was thanks to this girl (the murper) that I began to delve deeper into the meep phenomenon. How is it that a word from my early childhood could retain such an important presence in my life today? How is it that a vestigial word can still be meaningful? After much reflection it became clear to me that the root of meep's potence transcends its four-letter existence. It retains its staying power because it is in fact a manifestation of a desire that is common to all humans.

 

Everyone wants to meep. On a hot day everyone wants to knock off their sweaty, toe-scrunching dress shoes and run barefoot through the grass. When no one else is on the sidewalk everyone looks over at the raised curb and longs to walk along it, heel to toe, arms out. and imagine they are traversing a tight rope. At the end of Thanksgiving dinner, after vowing several time that they will never eat again, everyone has the desire to flatten their leftover mashed potatoes with the heel of their spoon and drawn smiley face in the pristine blob.

 

These are the meep moments: The moments where though we relish the challenge, and empowerment of our adult lives, we long for the right of young children to live by the rules of nonsense. After a long exciting day of trading complicated words, about complicated ideas with complicated people, there is nothing more liberating than taking those words and peeling away their sophisticated sounding Greek and Latin roots. What is left is a word, that though excluded from the dictionary, holds enormous meaning.

 

 

這一篇，跟那篇《Knocking Wood》不同，能讀出好感的人很多，能讀出好處的人也不少。

 

這一篇從一個很個性化的象聲詞meep出發，講出作者對它的obsession，並賦予它其他常用詞匯的意義，當作者以meep發音而找到朋友，她發現了每個人都有屬於自己的meep，把我們從那些人為的複雜生活裏解脫出來，找到內心的一隅安逸。

 

能說出以上這些好處的人，是有一定欣賞水平的了。能寫出這麽一篇的人，就要說得出更多的好處。而能反複寫多篇這樣好文的人，又能說出什麽樣的好處呢？

 

首先，看這個meep的源頭。它來自CBS電視台的知名節目《The Muppet Show》，是另一個更知名的scath comedy《芝麻街》的成人版。所有看著芝麻街長大的人，都會習慣於看那幾個大嘴puppets繼續演繹出仿佛《老友記》的故事情節。

 

誰是這樣的人呢？如今25-35歲的人們大多如此。這正是今天的招生官主群體啊。

 

Meep的選題和2016年爆文《Costco》是異曲同工的妙。因為她們都選自一個招生官熟知的生活元素，屬於潛意識認同。而且，在申請文書裏寫出這樣主題的很少見。

 

於是，讀到這種文書，招生官的潛意識感覺就是轉角邂逅，冥冥注定，卻又往往是前無古人後無來者的可遇不可求感。於是，閱遍千帆之後，記得住的肯定還是這麽一篇meep。

 

其次，Meep這個象聲詞，聲音裏所牽帶的含義，大概率也是招生官們此時的心境。讀了成百上千篇的失敗後克服困難而勝利、項目中帶領別人去完成、或者假期裏貢獻自我而助人，招生官一定對優秀產生了審美疲勞。階前候蟲鳴唧唧，機上美人不成織了啊。

 

這時候，讀一個本來也屬於他們的故事，對於招生官是什麽感覺？那個大嘴巴的Beaker，我閑的時候也喜歡看的哦。Meep，我也在記憶深處記得它。象聲詞的好處，就是它直通人類的潛意識，因為聲音的分辨邏輯是我們的腦神經係統在進化中最早完善、潛藏最深，而且保持24*7的後台運算。一個小確幸的象聲，必是勾起我們“大杓才添小器盈，啾啾唧唧似吹笙”的感覺。豈不妙哉！

 

最後，來看看文中的幾個場景敘事，讀到了有沒有太熟悉呢。

 

在感恩節的用餐後，把剩下mash potato在盤子裏抹得平得不能再平、並用手中的勺子作畫笑臉的時候，你們一定是圍爐在母親的餐桌旁，聽她講那過去事情。

 

或者，就在讀到這篇的時候，招生官肯定是剛被那些complicated people用他們的complicated words講了一整天的complicated idea。來，正好一起meep一下，回歸簡單吧。

 

以這樣的文字結尾，踩著別人成堆的失敗走向自己成功。是誰說的來著？別人禍都是我們福之所依，或者他們失敗就是我們成功之母。

 

反正到了這裏招生官已經情不自已，直接手寫一張賀卡，表達自己對這篇文書的讚許之情。

?

 

OMG，你這時候應該再去讀讀那篇<Knocking Wood>文了。那一篇的結尾，也是這麽隱晦地Q到招生官，甚至連名字都Q的那麽精確。

 

為什麽，芝大的好文書，文字上一個比一個妙，題材上一個比一個精，而且結尾處還是一水兒地啄中招生官的要害。這些作者的腦洞都是怎麽長的啊。