College Essay系列（五十）：2024 哈佛成功文书（5）

前四篇分别是：

College Essay系列（四十六）：2024 哈佛成功文书（1）

College Essay系列（四十七）：2024 哈佛成功文书（2）

College Essay系列（四十八）：2024 哈佛成功文书（3）

College Essay系列（四十九）：2024 哈佛成功文书（4）

第五篇，Sarika 的《I, Too, Can Dance》

I was in love with the way the dainty pink mouse glided across the stage, her tutu twirling as she pirouetted and her rose-colored bow following the motion of her outstretched arms with every grand jeté.

I had always dreamed I would dance, and Angelina Ballerina made it seem so easy. There was something so freeing about the way she wove her body into the delicate threads of the Sugar Plum Fairy’s song each time she performed an arabesque. I longed for my whole being to melt into the magical melodies of music; I longed to enchant the world with my own stories; and I longed for the smile that glimmered on every dancer’s face.

At recess, my friends and I would improvise dances. But while they seemed well on their way to achieving ballerina status, my figure eights were more like zeroes and every attempt at spinning around left me feeling dizzy. Sometimes, I even ran over my friends’ toes. How could I share my stories with others if I managed to injure them with my wheelchair before the story even began?

I then tried piano, but my fingers stumbled across the keys in an uncoordinated staccato tap dance of sorts. I tried art, but the clumsiness of my brush left the canvas a colorful mess. I tried the recorder, but had Angelina existed in real life, my rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” would have frozen her in midair, with flute-like screeches tumbling through the air before ending in an awkward split and shattering the gossamer world the Sugar Plum Fairy had worked so hard to build.

For as long as I could remember, I’d also been fascinated by words, but I’d never explored writing until one day in fourth grade, the school librarian announced a poetry contest. That night, as I tried to sleep, ideas scampered through my head like Nutcracker mice awakening a sleeping Clara to a mystical new world. By morning, I had choreographed the mice to tell a winning story in verse about all the marvelous outer space factoids I knew.

Now, my pencil pirouettes perfect O’s on paper amidst sagas of doting mothers and evanescent lovers. The tip of my pen stipples the lines of my notebook with the tale of a father’s grief, like a ballerina tiptoeing en pointe; as the man finds solace in nature, the ink flows gracefully, and for a moment, it leaps off the page, as if reaching out to the heavens to embrace his daughter’s soul. Late at night, my fingers tap dance across the keys of my laptop, tap tap tapping an article about the latest breakthrough in cancer research—maybe LDCT scans or aneuploidy-targeted therapy could have saved the daughter’s life; a Spanish poem about the beauty of unspoken moments; and the story of a girl in a wheelchair who learned how to dance.

As the world sleeps, I lose myself in the cathartic cadences of fresh ink, bursting with stories to be told and melting into parched paper. I cobble together phrases until they spring off my tongue, as if the Sugar Plum Fairy herself has transformed the staccato rumblings of my brain into something legato and sweet. I weave my heart, my soul, my very being into my words as I read them out loud, until they become almost like a chant. With every rehearsal, I search for the perfect finale to complete my creation. When I finally find it, eyes dry with midnight-induced euphoria, I remember that night so many years ago when I discovered the magic of writing, and smile.

I may not dance across the stage like Angelina Ballerina, but I can dance across the page.

I, too, can dance.

开篇是一段PBS动画片《Angelina Ballerina: The Next Steps》中的小粉鼠Angelina Ballerina的舞蹈。这对于熟悉的人来说，无论是看片长大的Gen Z，还是家里有Gen Z 的父母，它的画面感十足。特别是读到两个法语词，“pirouette” 和“jeté”，你们有没有不明觉厉？在我发给文书班课的资料里，就有这些精选的法语词汇，用起来吧，像一个Elite English Writer。

第二段，故事发展到三个“I longed for”，让读者从narrative的文字中，感受到屏幕前的一个小女孩的舞蹈熏陶和渴望。第三段，作者的笔头干练地滑向故事的转折点，wheelchair上的残疾女孩向往舞蹈，这岂不是折磨吗。第四段，换钢琴来试试吧。连finger dance 也还是不行，作者还超有想象力的场景，即Angelina Ballerina freeze in midair来说明自己在钢琴上的失败。

第五段，Poetry Contest，进入写作的主题。一夜的mice dream-about，激发出早晨的外空灵感，于是产生了作者的第一篇获奖作品。第六段，作者没有在成长史上耽搁笔墨，而是直接跳跃到现在，有文学创作，也有科学报道。段尾的三个分句，以从前的wheelchair女孩向往舞蹈入墨，把读者拉回到开篇。期间没有用到一个关联词，却能把情节无缝衔接在一起，这笔法值得学习。

第七段，作者为自己的写作兴趣给出一个更有画面感的备注：静夜思。举头望明月，低头思胡桃仙子。给每一个故事创造一个完美的结局的时候，作者想到的还是四年级那夜发现写作时的兴奋。第八段， “I may not dance…but I dance…”一句总结，回顾全篇。从语法到内容的强烈对比，给读者勾画出一个残疾女孩的精彩成长！

这篇的好处主要在于：1，结构紧凑，以内容而不是以关联词语完成前后的关联；2，多次使用呼应，如mice、sugar plum fairy、Angelina Ballerina，不拘于篇首尾位置；3，形象化语言丰富，比如 “cadences of fresh ink”，同时还善于使用外来词汇，“pirouette” “jeté”和 “en pointe”；4，首尾段简捷干练，在给读者传达价值上，毫不啰嗦。

说了这么多，只是难掩阅读的快感而已。这篇我给出少有的A+。