“小心。。。。。。注意注意。。。。。。树树。。。。。。减速快点儿减速。。。。。。46号出口，方向盘左打。。。。。。看着树，树。。。。。。小心路灯。。。。。。树树。。。。。。”
当我坐在校车上，即将离开比赛场地的时候，心里别提有多爽了。独自一人找了一个靠窗的座位坐下，膝盖抵着前面的靠背。无聊的刮着一块儿粘在校车上的绿色胶带，像是不久前一次公交车司机大叔的疏忽造成的刮伤吧！另一只手拿着Ipod浏览，时不时的拨动下滚动条。玻璃窗上映着我的“鬼脸”，脑海中浮现出了电影屏幕上常出现的开场：“啪啪”从公交车上传来了几声枪响。现在已经入秋了，脑海中浮现出的是一望无际的大自然的美景，可惜眼前的场景只有马路。我看电影总是习惯跳过重点，现在屏幕上播放的是电影结尾时的参演人物名单，配着Peter Gabriel的“Solsbury Hill”，很舒服，好过汽车轰鸣的声音。某种原因来说，这是我喜欢的电影开场。车上这个男孩是谁无所谓，因为无论他是谁，他要做什么，他一定是要去某个地方。
即使我是一个隐士，也不一定要每时每刻独处。我也喜欢周围人多的时候，比如现在，我和我的朋友在一起。对我而言，公交车是唯一一个让我不会感觉压抑的地方。它是一个神圣的地方，可以激发我的想象力。就在刚才，我的脑海里构建了一幅图像：在一座大都市里，从高空抓拍了一张手里拎着公文包的孤寂男孩儿，伫立在那里，呆呆的望着成群的钢铁怪兽。这是他第一次孤身来到大都市，然后。。。。。。
路边的树木把我的思绪又拉回到现实里。我坐在公交车上。这一刻提醒着我，从透明的玻璃屏幕上看到的都是幻象。我所看到的不是现实，最起码不全是现实。
车上，队友们喋喋不休的闲聊时不时会打断我的思绪，但是，没关系，这并不影响我的心情，我继续望着窗外。有一天，我会这样称呼我的工作室：车窗启示。我会感激那些日子里，透过水渍斑斑的车窗，想象着有情人终成眷属的浪漫画面；曾经雄心勃勃的政客坐在桌前为挫败而落泪的悲惨孤独；一位将死老人默默的念叨自己家人时的孤单落寞；这些统统都是我的幻想，也是我的理想。这就是我。车窗上可以看到我，电影的背后也可以看到我。
我喜欢那些电影的开场。参演人员清单就好像默默的两个字“谢谢”呈现给所有为塑造我付出辛勤汗水的台前幕后的人们，但这里，每一个人的辛苦努力只是我的故事的开始。我就是车上的那个男孩儿。我不知道他要做什么，但是我知道他一定是要去某个地方。现在，我很满足的坐在车上，手上拿着Ipod，看着疾驰而过的路边的树木演绎着我的故事。
ESSAY赏析
2013这一届，哈佛共收到29000份申请，而这份ESSAY脱颖而出别具特色。和大部分申请者一样，作者勾画出了一个情节：运动队、繁忙的日程、雄心壮志；在厚厚的简历和优越的GPA背后，作者让大家看到的是个人的光芒。
我们的目光首先跟随作者集中在校车上，但是随即就被作者带入了电影世界中。作者只是粗略简单的介绍了体育项目，让大家有足够的了解然后又将全文拉入了他对电影的热爱。文章剩余部分，在作者的带领下，我们也时而存在于虚幻里时而现身于现实世界当中。作者的人物性格塑造很罕见，通过一部校车和幻想连接而成。我们看到的不仅仅是作者对电影的热情还有无限的个人潜能。
全文的缺点是太过繁冗。例如“绿胶带”那句虽然很形象，但是，却没有太多的介绍作者本人。全文最出彩的地方，即传达了作者的理想：“I’m that boy in the car. I don’t know what he’s doing, but I like that he’s going somewhere.”不管怎么说，这是透过车窗作者带给我们的自己。
参考全文
(19)NOAH HOCH—“BUS WINDOW REVELATIONS”
Tree . . . tree . . . speed limit . . . tree . . . Exit 46 next left . . . tree . . . tree . . . light pole . . . tree . . .
That’s pretty much how it goes on the bus rides to away games. I sit alone next to the window with my knees pressed up against the seat back in front of me. With one hand, I pick at the green duct tape that the bus driver used to cover the slice some delinquent cut into the strange material. With the other, I scroll through playlists on my iPod. Looking out the window, the trees just passing by, I can see the ghost of my face in the glass and I’m always reminded of those movies that begin with shots from inside a car, staring out at the fields of autumn trees, nature’s memorial to the wilderness that once existed where the roads are now. As the credits fade in and fade out on the screen, always avoiding the direct center, a comfortable song like Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” just barely plays over the sound of tires on asphalt. For some reason, this is my favorite way for a movie to begin. I guess I like not knowing who the boy is in the car, but knowing that whoever he is, whatever he’s doing, he’s going somewhere.
I don’t sit alone because I’m a recluse. Quite the contrary, I thrive when I’m around other people, and my best friends are all on the team. But, the bus has become the only place where I don’t feel obligated to be working; it is a sanctuary for my thoughts, my imagination. In the passing fields my mind builds an entire metropolis and focuses in like a camera swooping down from a crane on a single boy,suitcase in hand, gawking at the intensity of a hundred-plus story steel mountain. It’s his first time in the city and . . .
Tree. The stick structure derails my train of thought and I am back on the bus. The interruption reminds me subtly that what I see through this transparent, glassed screen is only a figment. There is no reality out there in what I see . . . at least not yet.
On the bus, over the chatter of my teammates, my thoughts and my ideas may be fleeting and incomplete but they’re enough to compel me to keep looking out the window. Someday, that’s what I’ll call my production studio: BUS WINDOW REVELATIONS. It will be a tribute to all those days where, past the water-splotched glass, I would see the two lovers finally reuniting, the once ambitious politician sitting at his desk crying tears of defeat, or the quiet resolve of an old man on his deathbed in the shadows of a mourning family. This is my imagination. This is my dream. This is who I am. I am reflected in the pane and I am reflected in movies behind it.
I like to think that I’m a lot like those movie beginnings. The credits roll like a silent “thank you” to all those who have put hard work into making me, but here the end of their work only becomes the beginning of my story. I’m that boy in the car. I don’t know what he’s doing, but I like that he’s going somewhere. And for now, on the bus, I’m content to stare out the window, iPod in hand, and let the revelations come with each passing tree.
COMMENTARY
Harvard received over 29,000 applications for the class of 2013, and this essay is a great example of how to make your application stand out from the roughly 28,999 others. The author takes bits and pieces common to most applications—sports team, busy schedule, grand ambition—but imbues them with an introspective and personal glow that lights up what’s behind his jam-packed résumé and stellar GPA.
We open on the image of the author looking pensive by the window of a school bus, but quickly move into the realm of metaphor and fantasy as the objects outside the window become a backdrop to the author’s internal film screenings. The author treads lightly on the sports issue, giving us just enough for context but holding back so that it doesn’t distract from what the essay is really about: his love of film. Through the rest of the essay, we move with the author back and forth between fantasy and reality. The writer affords us rare insight into his personality through the vehicle of his personal imaginations and fantasies—these are the types of creative outlets that define the writer, an individual who shows that he is inspired by the possibilities of film and the even more infinite range of his own potential.
At a few points, this essay gets bogged down with excessive detail. Descriptions like “the green duct tape that the bus driver used to cover the slice some delinquent cut into the strange material” give us a nice visual setting for the rest of the essay, but they tell us nothing about the author himself. At its best, his candid writing conveys the applicant’s sincere dreams for the future: “I’m that boy in the car. I don’t know what he’s doing, but I like that he’s going somewhere.” All in all, this essay succeeds because it is a bus-window revelation of its own—of the boy behind the application.
—Jillian Goodman
