The Common App Prompt :
 

"1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story."

 

 

On the way home from school, I pick up trash. 

It's not really a good-Samaritan kind of thing. And definitely not for the recognition, or brownie points or a badge. I think everyone's seen the slogans and signs, the people in eye-searing fluorescent yellow strolling along the highway with their bags and community service sentences, the posters for beach cleanups, right? Everyone's heard the slogans, the deep rumbling sound of green trucks with bits of plastic and paper and who-knows-what drifting out of the back and backwards down the street. Green energy and sustainable livestock versus atmospheric holes showering the earth in deadly radiation and islands made out of trash. And the easiest thing to say in the face of all this seems to be- what am I supposed to do about it? Of course it is. One person, ten people, a hundred, a thousand, a million people picking up a few pieces of trash every day wouldn't make a dent. And I'm just one person! So, why? Because I'm an optimist, because be-the-change, because I'm just that idealistic? Well, yeah.

But also, it’s because the flowers are just really nice. 

For every dew-soaked napkin, empty Starbucks cup, and dusty chip bag stuck  under a fence or scraping along the edge of the sidewalk, there are flowers. 

Every kind. Every shape, color, and genus you could hope to find on an average suburban street. Roses spanning the entire natural spectrum. Sun-yellow clusters of marigolds. Tiny blue forget-me-nots, long-stemmed orchids and hydrangeas stretching up out of the ground like relieved students after a long, hard test. Tulips and baby’s breath and dandelions and a hundred others I don't know the names of. 

On good days there’s a flower on the ground, and I pick it up. One hand, trash, other hand, flowers. Elbows, pinning books to chest. It's a good system. I've worked it out over some time, over a few spilled binders and a lot of uncomfortable juggling. I bring the flower home, and put it on my desk, where it cracks and dries but the colors remain for days, weeks, sometimes months. Eventually, a clumsy movement or a gust of wind gives it the last push into dust and it finally goes. The trash goes when I get home that day. 

The way I see it, the flowers outweigh the trash. They stay longer. They make my room beautiful. The way I see it, no one needs to save the whole world on their own if they can just save a little bit of it. The way I see it, if I weren't looking for the trash, I'd never see the flowers. 

So I pick up trash. And there's a lot of shift-my-stuff-to-hold-something-else, ew-ew-ew-why, and where's-the-nearest-trashcan. But I keep doing it. Because I'm an optimist. Because I'm just a little idealistic. Because I have an impulsive tendency to do one more experiment, make one more calculation, mix one more ingredient without measuring, keep trying- just one more time, just for fun, just because- that's inconvenient and impractical more often than not. It's who I am. I try. I look at the pretty things. I make them last as long as I can. And maybe I make the walk for the person after me a little nicer.