JHU招生官公布的六篇2025届优秀申请文书（六）-新东方前途出国

6、Dancing Together

(by Dayann)

I cannot dance.

This is not something I often admit willingly; in fact, it is quite baffling to me how horribly incapable I am at performing even the most basic movements on command. My grandmother often describes it as “a tragedy” as she is forced to watch her grandchild absolutely butcher our country’s cultural dances, beautiful expressions of our unique West African roots turned into poor facsimiles by my robotic movements.

And yet, year after year, I find myself taking the dance floor at my family’s events, seemingly unaware of my objective lack of skill. Eventually, my display proves to be so amazingly unbearable that I am removed from the floor and shown the correct movements over and over again until I am able to replicate them well enough to come back. Bizarrely, despite my previous declaration that I cannot dance, for the past three years, I have found myself performing an entire choreographed routine at my school’s yearly pep rallies.

It is through looking back at these events that I realize that I have created a mischaracterization of my dancing abilities through my decisive first sentence. I can dance and am, in fact, very capable of doing so, but not when I act insularly. My ability to dance correlates directly with how willing I am to collaborate, the input and support of others turning the uncoordinated and unwieldy into the near-graceful.

My attempts at dancing have led me to value community and collaboration greatly, and I find myself seeking and being drawn towards environments that will allow me to continue to develop both of these values as I learn and grow. Through my internship with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, I was exposed to and became fascinated by the collaborative spirit that lies at the heart of Johns Hopkins. The idea that one cannot discover or innovate when working alone was affirmed during my research, and I have come to see that mutual collaboration and community are integral aspects of Johns Hopkins’ unique culture. From the research initiatives that breach the boundaries between class levels, to the many organizations such as the Tutorial Project, relying on the shared initiatives of different students to directly make an impact on Baltimore and its many communities, and the distinctive access to especially interdisciplinary topics such as neuromorphic systems, I view that Johns Hopkins exemplifies the peak of collaborative achievement in education.

招生官点评：在Dayann的文章中，我们了解了一些关于他的事情。首先，他喜欢参与。尽管他坚持说他不会跳舞，但我们看到他在整个文章中都在跳舞。其次，他意识到自己实际上可以跳舞，但需要与他人合作，发挥自己和团队的最佳品质。第三，他能够将这与他的未来联系起来。他认识到，为了发挥自己的潜力，他希望在一个可以与同行合作的地方，让他们挑战自己，让自己变得更好。

Dayann（马里兰州）自述：选择关注我的文化和我以前的不安全感作为一种媒介，通过它我可以展示这种背景如何塑造了我以及我的价值观以及我在学术和研究兴趣中想要什么。写这篇文章最具挑战性的部分是想出一种方法来弥合我从内省中了解到的自我与我想从大学获得的具体经历之间的差距。它本质上是识别并表达我认为霍普金斯大学是适合我的地方的原因。