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Rate the first paragraph of this essay...let me know what you think?

This is a rough draft of the first paragraph of my college essay. It is an opener... soon the essay gets into how therapeutic and inspirational singing is for me. if you get bored and think its too long...let me know what should be cut. And if you take your time to read this... thank you so very much! People are born as impressionable blocks of clay. Figuratively they are handed down on a sort of assembly line. This assembly line is never terminating; switching trajectory and gear at a moment’s notice, and often stalling throughout a lifetime. This conveyor belt is fueled by our home life, race, nationality, neighborhood, language, and society. When I hear someone boasting about being self-defined, I can’t help but to be contrary. No matter who you are, I tell them “you are what you eat”. Every organism that has ever sprung from this earth is a consumer, whether literally consuming nutriment or something much more. We are conditioned by our family; we digest our mother’s affability or our father’s secular path, but these are just superficial examples. The ones closest to us taught us not only how to walk and talk, but how to think and when to feel what. Long before we are conscience of our wants and needs, living parameters were established and we are confined to a thought process. In my opinion, options for the way we live our lives are almost infinite because we have been subject to so many ideologies, but ultimately we will choose what we feel is most comfortable; expression of free will is to work between intangible walls. The point being, people are built to be broken then built up and broken once more, and this is a cycle of growing. Over time we accumulate layer upon layer of emotional scarring. And, I believe we are mostly defined by inhibition and the struggle to overcome it. We almost always lose the battle against ourselves, but doesn’t it feel terrific when a blue moon rises and we win. We need an indiscriminate outlet to vent into, let ourselves melt into. It wouldn’t matter if we preferred socializing as a form of therapy, or mastering the art of glassblowing; without a sense of liberation from our day to day lives, we might lose it. Thanks guys !!!!!!!! so !!! much!!!!! Now ...ill scrap most of that ! and simplify ! i gotcha !

Public Comments

1. Good start. Suggestions: a) Talk more about yourself and you as a person like who you are b) what question is this in response to? c) Break that big chunk into at least two paragraphs. Good luck, I feel your pain.
2. Alright this is awesome and well-written - great for your English class - but this is NOT what you want to turn in for a college essay. This is only the introduction, and you're already over 300 words. Max is around 750 words, I think. The reason I mention this is because first of all, the essay is supposed to tell the college about YOU. Don't waste your space with fluff. The second reason why I mention this... Just like a college admissions officer, I have never met you and I do not personally know you. You're already over 1/3 into the maximum word limit of this essay and I can honestly say that after reading that I don't know ANYTHING at all about who you are. That is probably the worst position you could possibly be in at this moment, in terms of your essay. EDIT: To Josh - yes, admissions officers DO need you to spell it out for them. They want concrete examples of why YOU are different from someone ELSE. "we accumulate layer upon layer of emotional scarring" can apply to anyone. I saw Josh take a stab at what it may mean, but the truth is, neither he nor I knows what you're referring to. Nor will an admissions officer. I DO have the analytical skills to follow you, but I do NOT have the telepathy to know why and how this applies specifically to you, and how it's significant to you in particular. If they don't know what you're talking about, how are you going stand out to them? "We almost always lose the battle against ourselves, but doesn’t it feel terrific when a blue moon rises and we win." Some grammar errors in that sentence... "No matter who you are, I tell them “you are what you eat”." There's some disclarity between the use of the first "you" and "them." After saying "Every organism that has ever sprung from this earth is a consumer, whether literally consuming nutriment or something much more." you go on giving a few examples. Yes, I can totally follow the ideas you're presenting. The mistake is that these examples are too broad. Again, they apply to EVERYone. Don't make this an essay for psych class analyzing human behavior. Make it personal! I'm not telepathic. You really have to be direct. Provide concrete examples from your OWN life about yourself and explain how those specific details shape YOU as a person. Why/how do those experiences define you as a person? Act as if they are asking the question, "who are you?" Even if that's not the topic, your essay should still be able to answer that question in some way. Again, this is good material! I really do like it for what it is. But I don't want you to be misled. Admissions officers are NOT solely impressed by writing style and skill. 90% of what they're analyzing is what kind of person you are. If you can't clearly convey to them who you are, you're sh!t out of luck. Make it personal, really, I'm trying to help you. This will set you apart from others. At my school, admissions officers from schools across the country visit to talk about their university. At least 200 schools are represented. I've gone to several of the lectures from schools including USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, etc. and they have all said the same thing about the essay - make it personal. "Don't tell us about your older brother, tell us about YOURSELF." Please take my advice if I wasn't serious I wouldn't put so much time into explaining this. It is very very important.
3. Whoa, I'm not sure what to say. Technically flawed -- I mean, "conscience" for "conscious?" -- c'mon. And too long and involved for a first paragraph, albeit I can see how it will segue nicely into your topic. But thoughtfulness, intelligence, and imagination are all apparent here: you have a fascinating mind. I can't say how the admissions people will react, but from my perspective, your essay puts you in a different league from the others whose efforts I've read here. I'd keep writing, then prune mercilessly and edit for clarity. You say, for example, that we're subject to many ideologies, and yet you say nothing about why you believe that to be the case. As in "We in the modern world are subject to many ideologies." And you say that the expression of free will is to work between intangible walls -- a marvelous irony -- but you don't explain to us simple readers of what it is that those walls consist. As in "expression of free will is to work between intangible walls, the walls of ---." You must show your work a bit in order to convince us that your thought is built upon a solid foundation, and be a bit more cautious with your generalizations, lest it sound to the hurried reader like you're throwing out half-baked New Age assertions rather than voicing carefully considered thoughts. EDIT -- I hate to say it, but the other comments reinforce a concern that I thought of voicing but didn't -- that you're a bit too smart for your own good. I think I have a *great* sense of who you are from this essay, but it seems that not everyone does. I mean, "we accumulate layer upon layer of emotional scarring"? That's 100 pages of a biography right there. My concern is that not everyone has the literary or analytical skills to follow you, that they need to read the likes of "When I was six, Uncle George burned my teddy bear." I hope others will weigh in on this, particularly those who know more than I do about the admissions process.