它离地面有10英尺高，正矗立在大厅里最显眼的位置。表面交织着蓝色、黄褐色和白色的条纹，摸上去非常粗糙。这一“创举”实在堪称是室内设计师的一大噩梦。
上文的“它”其实就是我家二层上悬挂了有5年之久的宽16英寸的厕纸绳索。哈哈。。。。。。你没有听错，是厕纸。
以“卫生光荣”发明的厕纸实在是一项 “图腾柱”似的创新（“图腾柱”这里意思是伟大），那时候我刚上7年级。没人会想到这项发明源于我的禁足事件：我一气之下，就把一大卷卫生纸铺开，将其悬挂在二层的扶梯上。很快我就把家里的卫生纸都用光了，一个“紧凑的绳索”就这样诞生了。
从那天开始，定期我会加长那节绳索，18个月过去了，它就变成了现在的样子。我妈妈从最初的惊讶中恢复过来后称其为永不褪色的雕塑，慢慢的它就成为了我们家里的一大风景：光滑的扶梯扒手、淡紫色的地毯、拐角的衣帽架还有它，已经完全融合在一起，不晦涩，不别扭，更不另类。我们全家都习惯了它的存在。它的存在给我们的房间增添了一抹新意，从另一个角度来说，是我们的家赋予了它另一种意义。只有当客人拜访我们家，吃惊的看着这尊巨型厕纸树雕塑，我们跟着才会多欣赏一番。
现在，它对我而言有了更深层的意义。它存在的恰到好处，和周围的一切搭配的如此和谐。它是我创造力的结晶，是我存在的证明，是连系我与父母之间最好的纽带。
为什么这么说呢？我还是从头讲起吧！我还很小的时候，命运就已注定：律师或工程师转型到律师。从小，我的世界里就缺少太多的创造感。我的母亲专攻数学，父亲喜好历史，哥哥扎堆科学世界里，他们都是从小培养的爱好。家里的成员里没有人爱好文学、艺术或相对充满想象力的学科。
可想而知，从小我就被迫接受家庭的熏陶。饭桌上，哥哥永远有聊不完的“质子、中字、电子。。。。。。”当父亲讲述特伦敦战役[5]的时候，我认真仔细的倾听着；由于母亲的良好基因，我乐忠于解决每道数学难题。我发现自己对这些知识充满好奇，但是在理解方面却有种说不出来的怪异感。举个例子吧。当我在文法学校接触了一个新单词“挂毯”（tapestry）后，我兴奋的回家告诉父母我的理解“一连串的数字就是挂毯”（Numbers are a tapestry!）这可难道他们了。对于我这种将比喻与科学相结合的解释方法可以理解成在不同背景下对一个知识的掌握。
随着年龄的增长，我意识到自己的生活里缺失了某种东西。这种感觉很奇怪且难以形容。好像是一种长期盘旋在我脑海中交织的无规律的声音与图像一直升高升高，似一颗流星，突然“嗖”的一声坠落到我的心里。很多年来我都无法解释这种感觉，只能把它定义为欲望：对未知世界的好奇以及想要去掌控的渴望。突然有一天，我好像抓住了这种难以明说的感觉，那是我第一次开始接触诗歌。那是五年级的时候了。几周学习下来，从Shel Silverstein[4]（Shel Silverstein（1932-2000）享誉美国文坛的绘本大师，多才多艺，集画家、诗人、剧作家、歌手、作曲家于一身）的诗歌集再到比较成熟的作品诗人：惠特曼[3]、库柏[2]、柯林斯[1]和丹尼斯。于是，我开启了一段艰难的诗歌之旅。虽然写作很青涩不成熟，但是我坚持每周练习提高我的诗歌水平。
在我的认知里，有创造力的人一定是很会写诗的人。他可以不断的通过各种形式表现自己的力量，如：散文作品、电影制作或者如果可以的话，我想说包括厕纸雕塑。我想说也许我还是小婴儿的时候就已经具有了这种创造力。而这些，是我父母不大可能有机会感知的。我仅仅觉得这种感知在逐渐扩大，上升。它已经占据我生活的大部分，包括我的喜怒哀乐。
和我的创作一样，我的创作力量不是虚拟的，是真实存在的。凡事都是相互影响的，在我的创造力逐渐扩大开来的时候，随之而来的矛盾也出现了——家庭的影响。就像我前面说的，他们给我灌输的知识或者他们眼里的兴趣爱好已经成为了我创作道路上的绊脚石。试想一下，谁会将诗歌比喻成渐近线，这是绝对不可能的。或者说了解一段历史是需要具有敏锐的洞察力的，何以说仅仅凭对一两个事件就能妄下推断？这些想法在我认识世界理解世界的帮助可以说是巨大的，单凭这一点我要感谢我的家人。
厕纸绳已经寿终正寝了。我和父母达成了一项协议，在我没有去上大学之前，这块“雕塑”会一直保留在我们家。但是，即使有一天它要离开我，我还是会一直一直记得它对我的意义。对于我的父母而言，虽然很难理解我比较另类的条纹创造作品，就像他们当初不能理解这个“失败”的基因作品（家族里诞生了一个另类的金发婴儿）。但是，他们的影响和希望一直支持着我，而大厅里那条厕纸绳，像一件永恒的礼物，一直一直在那里。。。。。。
ESSAY赏析
作者用冷门的手法开头真冒险，但好在作者神速的将内容拉了回来。而文章首段刚开始提及的“it”，在后文讲解中读者也明白说的是长达5年的厕纸雕塑。作者这种与众不同的跳跃式的介绍个人创造力的写作方式是文章的亮点，而且在文章末尾处再次说明。写法出人意料但又不失自然的道出了性格特点。
文章最大的也是唯一的缺点：太长（多于830字）。作者在具体描写自己性格塑造前用了大量的笔墨渲染（5段），紧接着又描述了家里的各个成员为自己的创造力定型；但是，在整体效果上它们之间的关系实在是太微弱了。
整篇文章最有力的地方就是其声音。语言自然不做作。非常真实的似乎在跟一个老朋友诉衷肠。对于招生官而言，最重要的就是准确生动的传达人物本身，而这篇ESSAY已经远远超过了要求本身，传达的非常到位。
释义：
1.柯林斯，美国著名诗人，2001年-2003年堪称美国的桂冠诗人。他是纽约城市大学文理学院 Lehman College 著名的教授，于2004-2006年2年间被评为纽约州诗人。
2. 库柏，（1924年10月9日-2007年10月26日）是美国著名诗人。生于新泽西州的亚特兰大城，20世纪30年代举家搬迁至普林斯顿，1946年获得威斯康辛大学文学学位，后于1953年进爱荷华大学继续攻读硕士学位；1950年任职于萨拉·劳伦斯文理学院（Sarah Lawrence College）一直担任教职工作直到1987年退休；1995年-1997年评为纽约州诗人。
3. 沃尔特·惠特曼（Walt Whitman，1819年5月31日－1892年3月26日），生于纽约州长岛，是美国著名诗人、人文主义者，他创造了诗歌自由体（Free Verse），其代表作品是诗集《草叶集》。
4. Shel Silverstein,享誉美国文坛的绘本大师，多才多艺，集画家、诗人、剧作家、歌手、作曲家于一身。他的作品被翻译成二十多国语言，全球总销售量超过一千八百万本。Shel堪称二十世纪美国文艺界令人印象最为深刻的鬼才之一， 作品有非常独特的个人风格.尽管Shel多才多艺，身兼多重身份，他令人印象最为深刻的，却是为儿童们所绘制与编写的儿童文学作品，儿童诗与儿歌，展现着惊人的温馨、幽默和想象力。1964 年，他以《爱心树》（The Giving Tree）一书，轰动文坛，奠定他在当代美国儿童文学界的地位。
5. 特伦顿战役爆发于1776年12月26日，在乔治·华盛顿强渡德拉瓦河至特伦顿后爆发的一场美国独立战争的战役。
原文参考
(21)EVAN ROSENMAN—“CREATIVITY, FAMILY, AND TOILET PAPER: A JOURNEY”
It stands about ten feet tall, towering over everything else in the front hall. It is covered in streaks of blue, tan, and white, and its ominous tentacles reach out in every direction. It is the stuff of an interior decorator’s worst nightmare.
I refer, of course, to the sixteen-inch-diameter rope of entwined toilet paper that has been suspended from the second floor of my house for half a decade. Yes, you read that correctly. Toilet paper.
The creation of this veritable totem pole of hygienic glory began in seventh grade. On the day the project started, I was grounded. Frustrated at being forced to stay in the house, I unrolled a spool of toilet paper and hung it from the banister on the second floor. Soon, I had used up every roll in the house and had begun weaving them into a compact rope.
After that day, I periodically added to the rope until, eighteen months later, it had swelled to its current dimensions. The ever-expanding “sculpture”—as my mother called it, after she recovered from the initial shock—gradually became a fixture in our house. It no longer seemed out of place, juxtaposed against the polished banister, mauve carpet, and angular coat rack that surrounded it. Rather, it added character to the room, and, reciprocally, the room characterized it. Only when guests visited, gawking at the massive tree trunk of bathroom tissue, did we tend to notice its presence.
Yet, the rope is deeply significant to me. Its “fittingness,” or comfortable position within more austere surroundings, has become an important symbol of my creativity, my identity, and my relationship with my family.
But let me start at the beginning. As the child of an attorney and an engineer-turned-patent attorney, I entered life with little creative guidance. My mother was drawn to math, my father to history, and my older brother to science, all from a young age. None were particularly inclined toward art, literature, or other imaginative pursuits.
I thus spent much of my early life immersed in my family’s interests. I listened to my brother excitedly list “protons, neutrons, and . . . electrons!” at the dinner table; I paid close attention as my father explained the Battle of Trenton; and I happily did math problems in my head for my mother. I found myself intrigued by these subjects, but there was an oddity in the way I understood them. For instance, it perplexed my parents when I learned the word “tapestry” in grammar school and promptly declared, “Numbers are a tapestry!” My constant need to apply metaphors to science also suggested that I understood those subjects in a somewhat different context.
Then, as I grew older, I developed a strange sense that something was missing. It was an odd feeling, a sort of longing intermingled with random sounds and images rising meteorically in my mind and then fizzling away like a falling star. I could not identify this elusive interest for years, only sensing it as an unfulfilled desire, an unopened window. And then, suddenly, it came into focus when I began to study poetry. Within weeks of first encountering poetry in fifth grade, I devoured volumes of Shel Silverstein and moved on to more grown-up work: Denise Levertov, Billy Collins, Jane Cooper, and Walt Whitman would all become cherished influences. I also soon began to keep a ratty poetry journal, where I wrote wobbly but steadily improving stanzas each week.
The creative person I had discovered would most often wear the hat of a poet. Yet, he would also come to express himself through prose, filmmaking, and, on occasion, toilet-paper sculpting. And because I raised that creative person from infancy—my parents, while supportive, knew little about nurturing the imagination—my creative soul returned the favor by raising me up. Creativity became the outlet for my joy, frustration, and even my sadness.
But my creativity, much like the toilet-paper rope, was not untouched by its surroundings. Rather, it was characterized and defined by them. Thus, the interests my family had passed on to me became intricately tied to my creativity. After all, who could deny the poetic elements of an asymptote—that which is approached but never reached? Or the insight required to understand history, where trends must be extrapolated from mere events? These synergistic ideas became key to my understanding of the world, and for that, I have my family to thank.
The toilet-paper rope’s lifespan is now approaching its end; I have an agreement with my parents that the fraying sculpture can finally be laid to rest once I depart for college. But I will always remember the rope for the part it played in the development of my unique identity. My family may have been befuddled by my strange creative streak (an accident of genetics, akin to my dirty-blond hair), but their influence and willingness to support me—even if that meant leaving a toilet-paper rope in the hall—has been a lasting gift.
COMMENTARY
Beginning an essay with a cold opener is a risky move, but this author pulls it off well by pulling it off quickly. The ambiguous, ominous “it” rewards the reader in the next paragraph with his description of a massive five-year-old toilet-paper structure. He builds his essay around this unusual object, using it as a jumping-off point to discuss his personal creativity, then tying it back in at the end. This is a creative and unpretentious way to tell admissions officers about a trait he possesses.
One weakness of this essay is its length—at over 830 words, it uses a lot of time and space to make its points. He spends five paragraphs setting up the introduction before starting “at the beginning.” He then begins to describe each family member in detail to set up a mold that he will then shatter when he discovers poetry for the first time. However, that revelation comes too late for maximum effectiveness.
The real strength of this piece lies in its voice. The tone is natural and not at all contrived. The author’s voice is authentic, much in the style of an old friend relating a personal story to the readers. For a college application essay, whose primary duty is to convey an accurate and appealing sense of the author’s self, this essay excels at portraying an introspective, easily relatable young man, eager to explore his self through creative venues.
—Helen Yang
