Nihon Hikikomori Kyokai
Crack with Jane
There are several edits that I need to make. It's not fantastic, and it's certainly not genuine. But it's there. My common app college essay.
When I was young, I believed in conspiracies. To put this into perspective, I am seventeen years old – young enough to be considered an adolescent, but old enough to use the expression “when I was young.” Believing in a conspiracy within “The System” shaped my childhood, and breaking free from multitudinous plaguing conspiracies has defined the course of my future.
My beliefs in the existence of conspiracies were very graphic, very rigid, very much influenced by the beauties of media and brainwashing. A conspiracy is a societal construct. In my mind’s rosy eyes, devious-looking men in suits and sunglasses assemble in suspiciously nondescript buildings. The room in which they create their lies and propaganda varies with the conspiracy.
In some cases, the abovementioned men and suits plot in the most obvious of areas, before large clear windows in offices. As I reconsider these mental images, I vividly detect the influence of Superman cartoons, in which Lex Luthor sits in his lair and creates malicious plots to conquer the world. Another prototypical meeting room is a sealed, blazing white room. Today, films such as The Matrix and Men in Black seem to be the models of this particular conviction. Overstated modernity was apparently very popular amongst conspirators.
A conspiracy forms to suppress the general population, which to my tender mind meant, in essence, me. The exact intricacies of a conspiracy were usually lost upon me, but from what I perceived, the men in suits wanted to become very rich, and this somehow involved making me miserable. Every disappointment that ever happened to me, I would attribute to the workings of a conspiracy, and every instant of success I attributed to my ability to break The System.
In my elementary school days, I was the victim of the vicious Asian Conspiracy. My very mother subjected me to many miserable activities. My hard-line aunt, who lived with my family at the time, enforced these. She drove me to detested soccer practices, forbade me from reading my coveted Star Wars novels, forced me to speak Mandarin, and physically coerced me to spend multiple hours a day practicing piano. I privately damned each of these activities, but I knew that the conspiracy prevented me from crying out for help.
To identify a single moment when I found folly in these beliefs is difficult. Gradually, my cynicism and belief in The System wore down, because my life was improving for no reason that fell within the bounds of any conspiracy theory. My oppressive aunt left the house. No longer did anyone force unwanted activities down my throat. I even began to enjoy practicing the piano, began to covet the skill. If there really were a conspiracy, I wondered, why would it reward me?
Seventeen years of life have imparted upon me the knowledge that conspiracies do exist. However, no vague men in suits have any vendetta against me. The conspiracies are rather indifferent to me, actually. They oppress me based on my shortcomings, but they will reward me for my strengths.
SD
Sept. 30, '06
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