College Essay系列（四十八）：2024 哈佛成功文书（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.

 

读到移民经历的主题，你肯定跟我一样想到的是Crassandra Hsiao的《English in Our House》。

必须说，移民主题被人写得烂了，很难写出具有个性化的好文书来。这一篇也是以语言困难为切入点，但不足的是前面分三段、128 words的introduction显得太长了。这个部分有一个"Eely-noise"，是一处很好的表达主题的细节。它是Illinois的错误发音，还可以给结尾做呼应。

对了，以一个dictionary entry做开场的写法，显得老套了点。不免让读者觉得开篇hook不足。

进入的英语语言障碍的第四段，以“konglish” 和 “pictionary” 来描述这个主题元素，虽然很通俗易懂，但是缺乏形象画面感，就不如《English in Our House》里面的In our house, snake is snack。这就让在后面结尾处总算出来的一个“rural”不仅仅是太晚，而且没有可呼应的元素。

后面的Biology和Music，以及两者之间的顺滑过渡，撑起本篇文字的亮处。但是，故事从这两个元素过渡到下一个college上的时候，却留有一个没填的坑，“their power to connect and heal people is much bigger than my example alone”。作者选择只让biology music治愈自己融入美国的困难，却没有写出足够connect people的内容来。这样写，算是从自己经历向到社会和升学概念的硬着陆吧。文书里一定不要引进概念，既不描述，也不事证。

到最后两段，文字上回到fish这个概念上，呼应篇首，总结全篇。但除了“rural”一词，没有新鲜的内容。这就不必再分出两段来，而是一段简短的文字就足够结尾。拿两段话、88 words来对应篇首，加上段首三段式introduction，这不是锦上添花，倒显得画蛇添足。而且“rural”跟开篇的"Eely-noise"不构成呼应。

Crassandra Hsiao的《English in Our House》是A+。这篇我就给个B+吧。