Common App Essay Essay - UC San Diego

John Muir once wrote, ‘In every walk with nature, one receives more than he seeks.’ Well, the first time I visited Yosemite National Park, all I could think about at six years old was the cold. Sure, the view was wider and deeper and brighter than any I had beheld through my binoculars, but, in the end, the waterfalls, the sea of pines, and the granite palace were beyond my enjoyment. Family trips like those made only a fleeting impact on me, an Asian girl with tunnel vision but not approaching Tunnel View. For the first fourteen years of my life, I was raised by tiger parents. Like the stereotypical Asian immigrant child, I was drilled to shoot for the moon and achieve nothing less than a landing. It’s hard to say whether I was stretched thin, but I rarely complained: I was made to excel in school, sports, music, and daughterhood. Driving to a place where all my achievements fell away felt oddly hypocritical. I questioned my parents’ motives for bringing me to a paradise just to admire it from my car seat. I couldn’t have cared less about the glacial history of Half Dome, the number of gallons of water spewed from Vernal Falls each year, and other meaningless information about which my parents pretended to care. Back then, we knew we didn’t belong in that crowd of nature lovers. In contrast to the bleak stone faces in Yosemite, the childhood trips that stayed with me were exclusively to the Philippines, my parents’ homeland. Something about returning there resonated more deeply than any American landscape, even for a girl who lived her whole life in the United States. Solitary activities like reading in my dad’s childhood home during a thunderstorm or watering my grandmother’s jungle in the tropical heat enriched my introverted nature. One morning during my trip in 2018, I woke up at dawn, crept through the comfortably silent house, and found the dining table set with steaming rice, sizzling bacon and eggs, and, of course, fresh-cut mangos. In a sweep of passion similar to Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away”, I imagined ghosts running the place, cooking, cleaning, whispering behind closed doors. I thought of my grandmother, who had woken before the rest of us to bring the house to life. She had passed away three years prior. In the midst of this sudden onset of sadness, I realized that I could never be alone, that I could never be without a purpose. ‘Think about who you are and who you come from.’ My grandmother, my parents, my voracious ancestors from whom I live worlds of time apart, they all reside in me. If they could defy, as doctors, lawyers, immigrants, women, what can stop me? Fast forward to high school. Once it registered that I had four years left before college, my parents decided to increase and expand our family trips. My dad learned all there is to know about camping, backpacking, and hiking, and in the last four years, we’ve visited ten national parks. At first, I joined my parents feeling resentful and internally grimacing at underwhelming memories of long car rides and empty silence in the wild. Eventually, I realized the beauty of nature in my own way. There I was, sitting on a wooden plank nailed into the slope of Half Dome about three-quarters of the way to the top. I gazed at my parents below me and into the eternal sea of pines and granite flanks, exhausted as I had ever been, but at peace as I had never been. This harrowing journey to Half Dome had simultaneously torn me down and built me up, exposing my raw capabilities and motivations. I relish this achievement as one of many where I landed on the moon for my own fulfillment and pleasure. In whatever I pursue, whether it be medicine, journalism, or music, I now recognize the value of my support systems. With this wisdom, I will be the one to come, see, and summit.