College Essay 系列 (二十八)：Hardly Essay (4) 麻工WL文书

白人女生MIT的WL文书

Prompt: Topic Engaging

Digging my needle into her knee, I carve out three distinct dimples. Armed with a repurposed dental tool, I create a long dent down her thigh revealing powerfully flexed muscles. This six-inch-tall clay gymnast lays sprawled out in front of me, her torso and legs detached. I look at the clock: 12:30 AM. Perfect. I can still work a while longer. Taking a small volume of clay, I squeeze it between my fingers into a tiny triangular wedge — the beginnings of a foot.

Removing my own foot from the warmth of its slipper, I point my toes. Muscles Hexed, bones bulging, I study its contours. Turning back to the clay wedge. I slice a little bit off one edge. I tum again to my own foot and observe for a while, tum back to the clay, back to my foot, and so on, little by little carving away the distinct features of my flesh.

It is an anatomy lesson as well as a sculpting session. I cannot simply grind out the rest of my project; each step requires careful planning and consideration. Leonardo Da Vinci spent hours studying cadavers to understand their structure prior to attempting to draw them. In my hand now rests a tiny, athletic, pointed-toe foot.

I look at the clock again: 2:15 AM. Already? Pushing back my chair, I reach my arms behind me and throw my head backwards in a long stretch. My back is sore in the best way possible.

Walking into Physics the next day, I keep visualizing my sculpture. My end goal is to have six gymnasts on a balance beam, each frozen in an instant of dramatic motion: jumping, spinning. flipping. Looking at the mechanics equation sheet in front of me, I know that physics will play an integral role in the success — or failure — of my sculpture. Each girl has to be precisely balanced, or else she will topple over.

My sister walks by and laughs. "What the heck? Why are you watching so much gymnastics?"

I click the link to Simone Bile's beam routine at the 2016 Olympics, continuing my research. As she winds up her arms for a front-flip, I switch to quarter-speed. Even slowed down, her movements are powerful. Muscles tightening like a spring, her legs recoil into her chest. I play the clip again, and again, studying the contours of her muscular frame. Her hair whips around, pointed straight outward from her head due to the centripetal force of her spin.

That's it! The key to my sculpture: her straight hair. For weeks I have been wracking my brain to figure out how to create a gymnast frozen in the middle of a front flip. She can't just float in mid-air, but how can I attach her to a surrounding figure Without the final product looking crowded and clunky? The solution: her straight hair frozen in the middle of

her flip provides the ideal concealment for a piece of sturdy wire to be fed from her body, through her head, and into the outstretched arm of the adjacent figure without ever revealing itself.

Whenever I make a new sculpture I approach it from both an artistic and scientific, engineering mindset. Before making an indent, I seek to understand the fundamentals of what I am making, just as I seek to understand the Universe in any physics or math class. It is through this blending of art and science that I can succeed in making the final product visually captivating yet structurally sound. The artistic and scientific process of materializing a sculpture from a mental blueprint never ceases to excite me.

= = = 我的评论 = = =

惯例，还是先说好话。

这篇文书读完，我觉得是惊艳。作者把一个雕塑设计过程，描述得让读者有观摩达芬奇创作的质感了。六位动感的美国国家体操队员，被作者雕塑成一件凝固的作品，怎么展现呢？当然要熟知动作的特色，又要保证飞在空中的人体的支点和平衡。如果是一般的雕塑者，一定会想到在人体内加一个硬体支架，然后用人体在外面包裹起来就好了。

但是作者没有，她只用clay。并且要给每一个动体找一个自身最平衡的支撑点。最后，对于Simone Bile，2016年里约奥运会五块金牌得主，作者创造性地用头发（空中甩出的马尾辫）做支撑。有趣啊。有趣！

词汇能力更是不肖多言。Dimple, torso, slip, hex, bulge, topple, wind, clip, coil, clunky, cease，丰富的象声词汇。还有个 anatomy lesson – sculpting session 这样的 rhyming juxtaposition。这位作者真是个好笔头。

把艺术和科学结合，这是个非常好的价值点。这篇文书故事就是作的创造性的绝佳表现。

我真的没有什么可以说坏话的地方。但是，MIT给了作者一个WL。

麻工大神们是真的看不出这个作者的价值吗？不是。记得我以前讨论麻工文书价值的那篇讲过，麻省理工不需要好文章。他们读了好文章，就会想到你是哈佛的菜。那就不敢录你了，特别是当你也确实符合H的profile时。

事实也是如此。这篇作者，真的在被MIT小气地WL之后，接连收到Y、P、S录取了。可惜的是，H拒了本文作者。这也不能奇怪。2021-22年度的RD阶段，可怜的哈佛AO们也没什么时间读过所有的好文书。这篇就被错过了。

这篇，要是REA阶段申请H，就一定会录取的。可是她为什么没有申H-REA呢？因为作者是个STEMer，她在EA阶段申了 CalTech (Accepted) 和 U-Chicago (Defer），就不可以再申Harvard的REA了啦。多数的牛娃在早申阶段都是很保守的，降半级申请。有EA但又挑剔的的CalTech和UChi，就很少给出offer来。而这位牛娃，拿到CalTech的EA是运气好罢了。芝大不就给她Defer啦。

文书，要写到恰到好处，既是技术，也靠运气。