Decisions, decisions...

I am deciding between two topics for my common app essay. I have one that I have already shown Gretchen (or the basic framework of it anyway), and that one is about my physical journey from China to the US to Canada to China to Canada to the US again. This is what I shall henceforth call the “concrete” one, because, well, you’ll see.

Halfway through this essay, and many “this is bad you should change it this-way-and-that-way” remarks from my parents later, I started on my Chicago extended essay. The weird one. I chose the first prompt, “Find x,” and I wrote something that used a road trip as a metaphor for life. I really like this one as well, so I’m calling it the “abstract.” And of course, I am not sure which one I should go with, because both have their merits and, of course, their pitfalls.

The concrete is my experiences, and it is physically real, but it is also somewhat complicated (because life is complicated, I know) and somewhat too serious and grandiose for my liking. I feel like I am trying to say, “This is what I went through, this is what happened as a result of that, and this is who I am now.” That is, of course, part of the point, but it seems too focused on things I am not focused on, because although my past is important, I would rather look to the future.

The abstract captures that part of me, the future. It has plenty of really cool metaphors (or so I think, anyway), and there is a lot of self-searching and adventure-trekking. It, however, does not speak much about my past except for one line about how many places I have lived in or visited, and so it may seem not quite rooted in reality. It was, after all, originally my essay for Chicago and therefore based on the assumption that whoever reads this essay has read my common app essay as well.

Of course, being the indecisive person I am, I couldn’t decide. I asked Dino if he would choose the concrete or the abstract (in those exact words, without mentioning my essay), and he said, “I’m a big concrete fan. Like 2+2=4 all the time.” Not surprising, coming from him.

So that is—

Concrete: 1
Abstract: 0

Any other votes? A sample size of one is definitely too small for any tests of statistical importance.