Sample Common App Personal Statement (Tufts)

Emma Stout '23
Houston, TX

M7652-000. Or at least that's how my bike-tire-greased, highlight-yellow, heel-cap-ripping-at-the-seams Chuck-Taylors are supposed to be colored. Freshman year, I tried so hard to keep them that pristine, popular M7652-000 color. Time progressed, however, and dirt, guitar chords, and conversations eventually covered the canvas of the shoes. When I first moved to Houston in eighth grade, I tried to follow the status quo and keep my shoes white. But as various conflicting influences crept into my life--Liberal vs. Conservative; Portland, OR vs. Houston, TX; LCD Sound system vs. Ed Sheeran--I began to realize how important it is to listen to the other side and to maintain the confidence to pursue my passions while inspiring others to do the same. I needed to appreciate Houston's voice and learn from its stories as much as it needed to hear mine, and my shoes grew dirtier every day as each person's testimony helped solidify and expand my own.

As I walk, one can first make out "Cheyenne yo yo" engulfing the right inner canvas, weaving through clasps and eventually boarding "PORTLAND!!!" I met Cheyenne through Freshman year volleyball and we were friends because I tried; I borrowed cowboy boots for football games, didn't discuss my quirky music, and washed my shoes. As I grew, however, it was our differences that brought us together. She forced me to see the other side, forced me to make my own conclusions without the influence of my background or parents.

In Portland, opinions are liberally voiced, and it's similar in my community in Houston, except rather than an abundance of Lizzie Fletcher stickers it's "Come and Take It". When I moved, I was bombarded by a completely foreign culture. By sophomore year, however, I realized that compromising myself in order to fit in was a mistake. I began vocally expressing my sentiments towards the world to my friends as I learned from theirs. While I introduced my friends to thrift-shopping and wrote articles about more environmentally friendly methods of transportation, they took me to my first line-dance and helped me examine the other side of gun-control in `Agora Coffee House'. As I grew more comfortable with expressing my beliefs, I began heading projects to install a bike rack around campus and took to writing more iconoclastic political pieces in English class.

My left shoe houses various meme references, chords from songs I have written, sketches of the latest NASA star cluster discoveries, practice lines of Italian greetings from when I was set on learning it, and "Lorrie Lake Ln." in small cursive letters. Sandalwood, my friends and I call it--a late-night, post-fast food, teen-angst polluted lake. Sandalwood is the cosmos and the meaning of God and the Sisyphus-like emotions that we discuss there. I never knew that Mormons couldn't drink coffee or that Romanians gut an entire pig to feast on for all of winter. Their philosophies, although often dissonating from my own, taught me that it's often beneficial to disagree.

When I was hurled into Texas, I was miserable when I didn't express myself within the Kinkaid-bubble. However, I quickly began to realize that I didn't have to like Ed Sheeran or keep my shoes M7652-000 to enjoy life. Learning to embrace and assess so many dissonating ideas has enabled to grow more into myself--it makes me more nonpartisan and has educated me on what it truly means to listen to the other side. Now, whether it's Texas or Oregon, Republican or Democrat, my life is a playlist of contradictions. In college, where everyone works on discovering "who they are" or what their place is in the world, I know I can provide not only diversity of thought, but can educate people through my own stories on how crucial it is to maintain an open-minded ideology towards the world and an individual's power to change it.