The Tug of War

"The Tug of War"
I stand between two men. The caramel-skinned man on my left holds his cane as if the world is waiting for his entrance. On my right the taller vanilla-skinned man stands erect as if he must carry the world. Each man reaches for my hand and
before long, a tug-of-war ensues between them. Each tries to pull me over the line of agreement but my body stays in the middle. During this struggle I hear their
voices saying:
"Cast down your bucket where you are!"
"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line!"
"It is at the bottom we must begin, not at the top!"
"The only way we can fully be men is with the acquisition of social equality and
higher education!"
Their voices blur. My torso stretches wider and wider. My arms grow in length as
each man pulls and pulls. Finally, I yell, "I can't take it anymore!"
This is the scene that plays in my head when I contemplate the philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, two foes attempting to answer a
question that never seems to go away: "How shall the African-American race be
uplifted?" their answers represented the right and lift of the social spectrum in the
early 1900s. I attempted to present their views in the IB Extended Essay. While I
wrote the paper something inside of me felt the need to agree with and choose one
philosophy over the other. I couldn't. So this struggle developed.
In the beginning, Washington looked as if he had already lost the tug-of-war. When
I first encountered the ideas of Washington I wanted to grab him and ask him,
"What was going through your head?" The former-slave-turned-leader-of-a-race, Washington advocated industrial education over higher education, When he said,
"cast down your bucket," he meant relinquishing social equality in the name of economic prosperity. When I read this, one word popped into my mind, "Uncle Tom." I felt that Washington had betrayed his race when he renounced social equality. Wasn't that a right every man wanted?
After examining Washington, examining Du Bois was like jumping into a hot bath
after sliding headfirst through a field of cow dung. The intellectual's ideas of higher education and social equality sat well with my middle-class African-American stomach. Du Bois represents everything I grew up admiring. Du Bois was the radical who attended Harvard University. His idea of a "talented tenth" to lead the
African-American race starkly resembles the black middle class today. I had no
choice but to agree with Du Bois.
So enamored with Du Bois was I that I forgot about Washington's practical ideas of
self-help and economic power. I witnessed Washington's ideas acted out in everyday life. I bought my "black" hair products from and Asian owner in the middle of the
ghetto and the corner store owned by Iranians supplied me with chips and candy. These facts made me feel that maybe African-Americans had shoved Washington too far back into the closet. At this juncture, Washington began to give Du Bois competition in a formerly one-sided war. Economic prosperity means power; a race with economic power cannot be denied social equality, right?
In order to resolve the dilemma presented by this tug-of-war, I looked at the
ingredients of my life. Washington appealed to the part of me that wanted to forget about social equality. That part of me wanted to live as it came and focus only on
self-advancement. Du Bois appealed to the part of me that felt no man was a man without social equality. Either way, both appealed to my life as an African-American.
The fact that two early twentieth-century advocates affected a '90s African-American girl shows that their message was not lost in the passage of time.
Neither man won the tug-of-war. Maybe this tug-of—war in my head was not meant to be won because their philosophies influenced me equally. Washington provided the practical ingredients for social advancement while Du Bois provided the
intellectual ingredients for such advancement. African-Americans must evaluate both philosophies and determine how both views can facilitate the advancement of the race. I still stand between two men but now I embrace them equally. ANALYSIS
The question of racial identity can be an enormous one for many people and often makes a great college essay. Writing an essay about this part of your development
is insightful into your person and your views. Admissions officers are trying to get to
a portrait of who you are and what you value, and little is more revealing than a
struggle for racial identity. Freelon chose to write about two black leaders to show
what her racial identity means to her. Her essay also shows a keen interest in how
history can be applied to her life – an interest that would appeal to admissions
officers trying to pick thoughtful individuals.
Freelon's essay is well written and well organized. She moves smoothly from her opening thoughts into the body of the essay and devotes equal time to each philosophy. She also shows clear examples of why she originally liked Du Bois and why she changed her mind about Washington. Her essay show important elements
of human nature – she admits that as a "middle-class African-American," she has a bias, and she is also wrong from time to time.
The main danger in this essay is oversimplification. It's difficult to condense the
arguments of two leaders into a few paragraphs, and Freelon doesn't present the total view of their philosophies. She also assumes a familiarity on the part of the admissions officers with issues of racial identity, which may or may not be true.
Overall, however, Freelon's essay is an excellent example of how a personal identity
struggle can reveal a lot about the person inside.
"Thoughts Behind a Steam-Coated Door"
By Neha Mahajan
Till taught by pain Men really know not what good water's worth.
------Lord Byron
A light gauze of steam coats the transparent door of my shower. The temperature
knob is turned as far as it can go, and hot drops of water penetrate my skin like tiny bullets. The rhythm of water dancing on the floor creates a blanket of soothing
sound that envelops me, muffling the chaotic noises of our thin-walled house. Tension in my back that I didn't even know existed oozes out of my pores into
streams of water cascading in glistening paths down my body. I breathe in a mist of
herbal scented shampoo and liquid Dove soap, a welcome change from the
semi-arid air of Colorado. In the shower I am alone. No younger siblings barging
unannounced into my room, no friends interrupting me with the shrill ring of the
telephone, no parents nagging me about finishing college essays.
The ceramic tiles that line my bathroom wall have the perfect coefficient of
absorption for repeated reflections of sound waves to create the wonderful reverberation that makes my shower an acoustic dream. The two by four stall is transformed into Carnegie Hall as Neha Mahajan, world-renowned musician, sings
her heart out into a shampoo bottle microphone. I lose myself in the haunting melisma of an aalaap, the free singing of improved melodies in classical Indian music. I perfect arrangements for a capella singing, practice choreography for
Excalibur, and improvise songs that I will later strum on my guitar.
Sometimes I sit in the shower and cry, my salty tears mingling with the clear drops
upon my face until I can no longer tell them apart. I have cried with the despair of my friend and mentor in the Rape Crisis Team when she lost her sister in a vicious
case of domestic abuse, cried with the realization of the urgency of my work. I have cried with the inevitable tears after watching Dead Poet's Society for the seventh
time. I have cried with the sheer frustration of my inability to convince a friend that my religious beliefs and viewpoints are as valid as hers. Within these glass walls I
can cry, and my tears are washed away by the stinging hot water of the shower.
The water that falls from my gleaming brass showerhead is no ordinary tap water. It
is infused with a mysterious power able to activate my neurons. My English teachers would be amazed if they ever discovered how many of my compositions originated in the bathroom. I have rarely had a case of writer's block that a long, hot shower
couldn't cure. This daily ritual is a chance for me to let my mind go free, to catch and reflect over any thoughts that drift through my head before they vanish like the
ephemeral flashes of fireflies. I stand with my eyes closed, water running through
my dripping hair, and try to derive the full meaning conveyed in chapter six of my favorite book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I'll be lathering shampoo
into the mass of tangles that is my hair as I work on a synaesthesia for the next two lines of a poem, or the conditioner will be slowly soaking through when I experience an Archimedean high, as a hard-to-grasp physics concept presented earlier in the
day suddenly reveals itself to me. Now if only they had let me take that AP Calculus test in the shower…
The sparkles of falling water mesmerize me into reflection. Thoughts tumbling in somersaults soften into a dewy mellowness. Do these drops of water carry a seed of consciousness within them? As I watch the water winking with the reflected light of the bathroom, it appears to glow in the fulfillment of its karma. Then, for a split second, all thoughts cease to exist and time stands still in a moment of perfect
silence and calm like the mirror surface of a placid lake.
I know I have a tendency to deplete the house supply of hot water, much to the
annoyance of the rest of my family. I know I should heed my mother's continual
warnings of the disastrous state of my skin after years of these long showers; as it is, I go through two bottles of lotion a month to cure my post-shower "prune"
syndrome. But my shower is too important to me. It is a small pocket of time away form the frantic deadline and countless places to be and things to do. It is a chance
to reflect, and enjoy—a bit of welcome friction to slow down a hectic day. The water
flows into a swirling spiral down the drain beneath my feet. It cleanses not only my body, but my mind and soul, leaving the bare essence that is me.
Analysis
This essay illustrates how something as ordinary as a hot shower can be used
auspiciously to reveal anything of the author's choosing. Mahajan could have focused on the academic subjects or extracurriculars she mentions in her essay, such as physics or the Rape Crisis Team, but instead she chooses a daily ritual common to us all. Though everyone can relate to taking a shower, doubtless few
shower in quite the same way Mahajan does or find it to be such an intellectually and
emotionally stirring experience. The intimacy of the act sets an appropriate stage
for her personal description of unraveling from life's stresses by singing into a
shampoo bottle microphone.
There is no signal, clear focus to the essay, but this accurately reflects the shower
experience itself—"to catch and relect over any thoughts that drift through my head
before they vanish." Mahajan touches on schoolwork, classical Indian music and
contemplation about her favorite book, all with humorous flair, and she even goes into emotionally revealing descriptions of crying in the shower. Unfortunately, she
dwells on crying for an entire paragraph, and reader cannot help but wonder whether she could survive without her shower to cleanse her "mind and soul." Ultimately, that Mahajan derives literally so much inspiration and relief from the
shower seems rather hard to believe. The notion that she could have done better on
her AP Calculus test had she been allowed to take it in the shower is amusing, but
doesn't seem to add much beyond the suggestion stand that vague "hard-to-grasp physics concept" seems excessive. Already she distinctly conveys her interest in
science through her language—"the perfect coefficient of absorption for repeated
reflections of sound waves" –and a supposedly subtle reaffirmation of this interest seems unnecessary.
Mahajan's vivid language and unusual description are principle qualities of this essay. She deftly avoids the temptation of resorting to clichés, and most everything
is entirely unpredictable. A relatively minor point is that her economy of language could be improved, as otherwise fluid sentences are occasionally overdone with an excess of adjectives and adverbs. Nonetheless, Mahajan conveys her talent for creative writing, and this carries her essay for beyong the lesser issues mentioned
earlier. And, of course, her distinctive showers theme helps this exhibition of talent stand out.