50 Successful Harvard Application Essays

VII. INSPIRATION

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Essays, about inspiration are common enough that authors should take care to avoid what has become
a bit of a cliché for admissions officers. The formulaic essay reads as follows: Author meets
someone worse off than him- or herself; author realizes that he or she has done nothing to merit an
easier life; author decides to use the lessons learned to fix the world in the future. Writing an essay
that doesn’t stand out defeats the purpose of the personal statement. After reading your essay,
admissions officers should know you and remember you, and a bland essay won’t accomplish that.
The repetitive and unoriginal insights aren’t the only things to watch out for when writing an essay
about inspiration. Often, essays of this nature attempt to sum up the whole of a student’s inspirations
in one five-hundred-word piece. For most, this is an impossible task, and the end result is unfocused.
The good essays of this nature focus on one source of inspiration and delve deeply into the author ’s
relationship with it.
Though they can go wrong, these essays can also be a great medium for a student to show
dedication to a cause. The idea of admitting the next leader of UNICEF or the person who will cure
juvenile rheumatoid arthritis is appealing to an admissions officer, and if an essay successfully
conveys an applicant’s dedication to that cause, it could be a great selling point.

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A
NTHONY
W
ILDER
W
OHNS
Tsunamis, Garlic, and One Thousand Cranes
I had never seen houses floating down a river. Minutes before there had not even been a river. An
immense wall of water was destroying everything in its wake, picking up fishing boats to smash them
against buildings. It was the morning of March 11, 2011. Seeing the images of destruction wrought by
the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, I felt as if something within myself was also being shaken, for I
had just spent two of the happiest summers of my life there.
In the summer of my freshman year, I received the Kikkoman National Scholarship, which allowed
me to travel to Japan to stay with a host family in Tokyo for ten weeks. I arrived just as the swine flu
panic gripped the world, so I was not allowed to attend high school with my host brother, Yamato.
Instead, I took Japanese language, judo, and karate classes and explored the confusing sprawl of the
largest city in the world. I spent time with the old men of my neighborhood in the onsen, or hot
spring, questioning them about the Japan of their youth. They laughed and told me that if I wanted to
see for myself, I should work on a farm.
The next summer I returned to Japan, deciding to heed the old men’s advice and volunteer on a
farm in Japan’s northernmost island, Hokkaido. I spent two weeks working more than fourteen hours
a day. I held thirty-pound bags of garlic with one hand while trying to tie them to a rope hanging from
the ceiling with the other, but couldn’t hold the bags in the air long enough. Other days were spent
pulling up endless rows of daikon, or Japanese radish, which left rashes on my arms that itched for
weeks. Completely exhausted, I stumbled back to the farmhouse, only to be greeted by the family’s
young children who were eager to play. I passed out every night in a room too small for me to
straighten my legs. One day, I overslept a lunch break by two hours. I awoke mortified, and hurried to
the father. After I apologized in the most polite form of Japanese, his face broke into a broad grin. He
patted me on the back and said, “You are a good worker, Anthony. There is no need to apologize.”
This single exchange revealed the true spirit of the Japanese farmer. The family had lived for years in
conditions that thoroughly wore me out in only a few days. I had missed two hours of work, yet they
were still perpetually thankful to me. In their life of unbelievable hardship, they still found room for
compassion.
When I had first gone to Tokyo, I had sought the soul of the nation among its skyscrapers and
urban hot springs. The next summer I spurned the beaten track in an attempt to discover the true spirit
of Japan. While lugging enormously heavy bags of garlic and picking daikon, I found that spirit. The
farmers worked harder than anyone I have ever met, but they still made room in their hearts for me.
So when the tsunami threatened the people to whom I owed so much, I had to act. Remembering the
lesson of compassion I learned from the farm family, I started a fund-raiser in my community called

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“One Thousand Cranes for Japan.” Little more than two weeks later, we had raised over $8,000 and a
flock of one thousand cranes was on its way to Japan.
REVIEW
The prompt to which this essay responds—discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or
international concern and its importance to you—is by far, the most difficult to pull off. Students who
choose to craft their essays around this or similar prompts have a tendency to drown out experiences
conveyed in their own voices with universal accepted truths expressed on behalf of the masses.
Remember, the goal here is to write a personal statement—not to draft a global Bill of Rights.
Approach this essay as you would a photomontage: The trick to using the prompt as successfully
as Anthony is to properly adjust the camera’s zoom. Anthony begins his essay with a landscape of the
tsunami, and then zooms in to end on a vivid portrait of his own character. Essentially, Anthony uses
the tsunami to frame the story of his life rather than using his life as a backdrop for a discussion
about the tsunami.
The crowning achievement of Anthony’s essay is the subtlety with which it illustrates Anthony’s
compassion and humanitarian spirit. The true subject of Anthony’s essay is not the tsunami, not the
time Anthony spent in Japan, but his fund-raiser. Yet, Anthony limits his discussion of the charitable
accomplishment to the last two sentences of his personal statement. By choosing to focus on why he
organized the fund-raiser instead of the fund-raiser itself, Anthony is able to portray his personality
to the reader in a humble, rather than self-congratulatory, tone.
Anthony does this in a truly praiseworthy manner, allowing his experiences to speak for
themselves. Anthony does not have to tell the admissions officer that he is culturally curious—the fact
that he heeded the old men’s advice and returned to Japan to volunteer on a farm does that for him.
Anthony does not have to explain that he is a dedicated worker—his mortification at having overslept
and the sincerity with which he profusely apologized to the family does that for him. The appropriate
framing of his charitable deed enables Anthony to tackle the most challenging prompt for a college
essay with a piece that brilliantly showcases his personal connection to an international tragedy and
offers deep insight into his individual character.
—Maddie Sewani

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