這篇essay是deadline前花一個晚上一氣呵成的，現在看起來寫得比較幼稚，再次感謝AO...

What experience in high school has mattered most to you? How do you see this experience influencing your decision-making in college?

Sometimes I’d like to put down my pencil and set aside the How to Get High Scores in College Entrance Exam workbooks, then take out a book with faded cover to read when all my classmates were still busy coping with their workbooks. I enjoyed reading the classics especially books written by Kafka and Calvino. I always lost myself in the fantastic world created by these great writers until the teacher took me back to the reality. (I don’t want to refer to his real name so let’s just call him the teacher.)

The reality, of Chinese high school students, is that we have to spend all our time preparing for the College Entrance Exam which is the only criteria in college admissions. The teacher would like every student to spend day and night on workbooks, leaving no time for personal interests. A girl with incredible music talents was told not to practice playing instruments or write songs any more.

When the teacher saw me reading the classics, he would say with his lips hardly moved, “XXX, don’t let me see you read these useless stuff again” and took my book away. Reading the classics is not useless. Only when reading could I constrict the logical part of brain and liberate the sentimental part of my brain. Every time I read classics I was both experiencing the protagonist’s life and rediscovering myself. There’s no chance for me to give up reading the classics. In order not to be caught by the teacher, I read the classics when others did homework so I had to cope with my homework even during the break. In the last two years, I tried to read a novel every one or two weeks. After reading, I would write down my understanding and thoughts in my journal which chronicles my reading.

Befuddled by the book but determined on my decision, I wrote down these words on the front page of my journal after reading Mr. Palomar the first time:
The only thing I want do in this complicated world is to simply be myself.