The Ripple Effect of a Broken Pencil: College Application Essay

A minuscule thing happened: a pencil cracked into pieces on the dirty, beige carpet of my middle school in eighth grade. When I picked it up and noted the jagged fracture about halfway down the length of the pencil, it was as if I was living in that moment. My parents had just divorced, leaving my family fractured. I was too young to understand what that meant at the time but I would gradually understand it as I grew up. At 13, I couldn’t fix the break but I held on to the pencil like my life depended on it. I wanted it to mean something. I wanted it to tell my story that even broken things could still be used as writing tools.

That year, I joined the creative writing club of my school, writing poetry and short stories on the Spinner. Writing gave me a voice that I felt I had lost by the time a lot of change occurred in my life. I wrote a story about a girl who finds herself sailing through a stormy sea with a cracked compass as her only map. I submitted it and it was published in a local literary magazine. It had been a long time since I had any power over what could be said about me. Seeing my words in print was therefore enabling and empowering and I knew that creativity was not just a resource but also a survival strategy. Throughout my time in high school, this would become a recurring theme. Small actions would have a broader impact. During my sophomore year, I noticed a troubling trend in my community: students struggling with science and mathematics were having trouble finding affordable tutors. As a result, I founded Bright Futures Tutoring, a service meant to help people rewrite their stories through tutoring. The program was held in a borrowed classroom on a Saturday schedule. We had over 30 students and many volunteers tutoring them. At the end of her first semester, one student, Mia, told me she went from failing algebra to a B. I remembered why I started this to begin with, to ensure that students like her were never stuck, as I once was.

I focused everything on helping others, and my curiosity about the natural world bloomed. I spent weeks one summer experimenting with biodegradable materials hoping to come up with some kind of plastic alternative I could use on a day-to-day basis. Each one of my failures got me thinking more and more creatively. When I finally created my work to present at the state science fair, I won first place. It wasn't about a trophy for the project, it was that perseverance it took to put me there.

For better or worse, I learned a little from all of this breakage, and the one thing that I’ve learned is that brokenness often precedes growth. A fractured pencil. A struggling student. A failed experiment. There were learned lessons in these moments, moments where I was taught to see potential within someone, where others might see limitations. I am fascinated by your college – that it will serve as a continuation of my story with my passions of education, environmental sustainability and creative problem solving being put into use. I hope not just to learn but also to create ripples of change, proving that even small actions, like picking up a pencil, can inspire something much bigger.