Pieces of Me

"Pieces of Me"
----Sandra E. Pullman
The black and white composition book is faded, and the corners are bent. It doesn't lie flat as many paper clips mark favorite places. Almost every sheet is covered with
writing – some in bold handwriting hardly revised, others uncertainly jotted down completely marked up and rewritten. Flipping through the thin pages, I smile, remembering from careless thoughts to assassinate prose to precisely worded
poems, this journal marks a year of my life as a writer.
In junior year, my English teacher asked us to keep a journal for creative writing, as a release from otherwise stressful days. We were free to write on any topic we chose. From then on as often as I could, I would steal away to the old wooden rocking chair
in the corner of my room and take time off to write.
As I now try to answer the question of who am I for this essay, I immediately think of my journal.
I am a writer.
My writing is the most intensely personal part of me. I pour my heart out into my journal and am incredibly protective of it. It's difficult for me to handle criticism or change rejection:
I can tell he wouldn't read it right wouldn't let the meaning sink into him slow and
delicious it would sound awful through his careless eyes I want him to open himself
up to it and let in a piece of me I want him to know this side of me no one ever has I want him to be the one to understand let me see he prods once more I tell myself
this time I'll do it I let myself go but as it passes into his rough hands I see it for the
first time it's awkward and wrong just like me I snatch it back from him and crumble
it it falls with hardly a noise into the trash
I am a child.
Growing up, I would always ride my bike over to the elementary school across the street and into the woods behind it. Crab apple trees scented the fall air and the winding dirt paths went on forever. I'd drop my bike at the base of a tree and climb
as high as I could. All afternoon I would sit in these trees whose branches curved out
a seat seemingly made just for me.
One day I biked across the street to come face to face with construction trucks.
Those woods are now a parking lot. I cry every time I see cars parked where my crab
apple trees once stood:
He allowed the sweet sadness to linger
As he contemplated a world
That he knew too much about.
I am a daughter, a cousin, a great-niece.
My family is very important to me. My mother has a huge extended family and we all get together once a year for a reunion. I play with my little cousins and toss them in
the air to their squealing delight. Many of my relatives are elderly, however, and I find it hard to deal with serious illness in these people I love. I am also deathly afraid
of growing old and losing all sense of myself. When visiting relatives, I have to come
to terms with these feelings:
With the toe of my sneaker, I push at the ancient pale yellow carpet. Like all the items in the apartment, it is way past its prime. It is matted down in most places,
pressed into the floor from years of people's shoes traversing back and forth. It will
never be as nice as it once was, that much is certain. At home it would be pulled up, thrown out, not tolerated in an ever-moving young family, not fitting in with all the useful, modern surroundings. But here, in this foreign, musty apartment where my great-aunt and uncle have lived so long that they seem to blend right into the faded
wallpaper, the carpet is a part of the scenery. It could not be removed any more than
the floor itself.
I am a friend.
I will always treasure memories of sleep-away camp and the friends I fell in love with there. Many of these people I have managed to keep in touch with, but I regret that some I have lost:
But now… the weather is changing. A cold front has moved in. the picture is barely noticed. Perhaps other pictures of other memories brighter and newer hide it from
view. A cool breeze steals in through the open window, and the careless wind knocks down an old picture from the bulletin board. The picture falls in slow motion, taking
with it a far-off memory. It comes to rest behind the desk, lying on the floor, never to be seen again. Its absence is not even noticed.
I am an incurable romantic.
Leaving a party one night, I forgot to return the sweatshirt I had borrowed:
Touching the small hole
In the bottom corner
And the stray thread
Unraveling the sleeve
I lift it up
And breathe in its smell
I smile quietly
It smells like him
I am a dreamer.
I often sit in class and let my imagination take me wherever I want to go. I love to
read stories of mythic Camelot or the legendary Old South, losing myself in my
favorite books:
The three dimensional
Kaleidoscope fantasy
Of far-off lands
And courtly kingdoms
Of passion and romance
And high seas adventure
Is shining with vivid colors
And singing with non-stop noise
My journal from eleventh grade not only chronicles a year of my life, but it tells the
story of who I am. It is the closest I can get to even beginning to answer that difficult question:
Tell them she says just tell them who you are let them know what makes you tick tick tick the clock is counting down I can't wait to get out of here just a far more minutes smile and pretend you care tell them who I am in 358 words double-spaced
12 point font as if I even know as if I could even if I did on a single sheet of paper
why I cry why I laugh why I want so badly to go to their lovely school
I guess I do know one thing about who I am.
I am a writer.
ANALYSIS
"Pieces of Me" is an admissions essay with attitude – a personal statement that takes a risk.
Like many college applicants, Pullman is interested in writing. Her essay stands
apart form the pack because she doesn't simply tell the admissions officer she likes to write. Instead, when used excerpts from her journal to show the admissions
officer how much she loves to write, how much she depends on her writing to help
her explain and understand life.
But Pullman's decision to include creative writing – i.e. cummings style – in her personal statement is not a decision for the meek of heart or the semi-talented.
Every high school senior has heard stories of college applicants who, in the quest to stand out among the hundreds of other essays an admissions officer must sort
through, submitted an original screenplay, musical composition, or videotape of an interpretive dance as their personal statement. In cases like Pullman's where real
talent show through, those risks may pay off. For others, a more conventional piece with a strong, clear thesis and well-written supporting arguments may be the better road to take.
Of course, no piece is perfect, including Pullman's. As original as many of her journal excerpts may be, Pullman prefaces many of them with somewhat cliché transitions
which weaken the underlying premise of the piece – that Pullman's unique writing
help articulate her unique personality. Her creative writing is exciting and
interesting; her more academic writing is less so.
Still, "Pieces of Me" is a risky endeavor that works. Pullman succeeds, without the
use of a 3-D visual aid or live performance, in making her application stand out.