This year, as they are every year, the senior class was given the task of writing an essay for their common application; many colleges use Common App to determine whether the prospective student gets in. This essay can be a deciding factor on admission to a certain university, so naturally many students spend a lot of time on it. With a generalized prompt, the essay can be a bit of a roadblock in the application process. Here is one of nine essays from Country Day that The Scroll and the college counseling felt knocked their essay out of the park.

*Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals

Kendall Smith:

I spent my summer sitting in a closet. This five-by-seven wood-paneled enclosure was inhabited not only by myself, but also by Jonathan, a twenty year old man with special needs. He had been sitting in this closet every summer for years and all attempts to convince him to change his ways had been unsuccessful. My mission was to get Jonathan out of the closet.

I met Jonathan my third summer of volunteering at a camp for kids with disabilities. Well known by staff for having a successful track record in problem-solving, I am frequently asked to deal with behavior challenges kids are having. Last summer I invented a hand signal for a boy with cerebral palsy, which became so successful that his family continues to use it at home.  But now they were asking me to sit in a closet with a full grown man who towers over my 5’1 stature. My heart pounded and my fingernails dug into the palm of my hand. I wanted to say no. I wanted to hold on tightly to the walker of my six year old buddy and refuse to wander outside the boundary of my comfort zone.

But I went.

My mission started off rocky. I began by offering Jonathan a reward if he left the closet, a hot wheels car, one of his favorite toys. He appeared to consider it for a minute, but then decided that he wasn’t going to accept my offer, indicated by his ear-piercing scream. After exhausting the list of every bribe and incentive I could think of, I was still in the same place I started, a closet.  Because Jonathan’s ability to communicate was impaired, he wasn’t able to tell me the reason behind his refusal to go outside. I sat in the closet for six hours every day, observing his behavior in the hopes of finding a clue. It was when I witnessed the way Jonathan interacts with bugs that everything clicked. The moment a fly entered the closet Jonathan was sent into a frenzy, flailing his arms and legs everywhere. I realized that his mind works on a negative feedback loop. The closet is a place of shelter from the chaos he pictmiures the outside world to be. But when something, such as a fly enters the space and threatens the stability of the closet, Jonathan acts in a way he believes will restore equilibrium. So the following day I pretended that there was a fly in the closet.

 “Jonathan did you just see that? There’s a fly in here, we have to get out!” I said while looking all around as if I was following the movement of “the insect.” But it turned out that convincing him of this was harder than I thought.  It took an hour of persistent claims and dramatic acting, when it finally happened: Jonathan left the closet. Staff stared in shock as Jonathan and I walked together down to the playground, for the first time. He spent the rest of the day playing outside like all the other kids do.  Everyone asked me what my secret was, as if I possessed some sort of power. But the truth is I just looked for a solution a little longer than anyone else had and that’s what made all the difference.

Jonathan has an impaired memory. He often doesn’t remember me and he never remembers leaving the closet. Each day I have to re-convince him that a bug is in the closet. Some days this takes thirty minutes, others it takes hours. Each time I know his joy will not last. He quickly forgets his love for the space outside the closet, but I never will. I go back to the camp every summer in the hopes of giving the world back to him.