whole new world essay

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“A Whole New World” from Aladdin

By tommy wallach.

The day the Aladdin soundtrack came out I was one of the first kids on line. Beyond the fact that Jasmine is the hottest cartoon character short of Jessica Rabbit, my favorite part of the movie was the music. When I watched it, I was forced to silence two well-meaning but over-exuberant twelve years old who had somehow already managed to have memorized all of the music by the three o’ clock show on opening day; displaying my most withering glare and all the authority I was capable of mustering, being twelve myself, I shut them down.

These were the days when Disney still let the music ride over the plot and character. When, like in the Fosse musicals of yore, the only real point of the plot was to facilitate the transition from one fantastic showstopper to another. Ironic then that Aladdin is one of only two of the quadrumvirate of modern Disney movies (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King) that has not been placed on the big stage. Maybe it was the technical nightmare of the magic carpet, or fitting Robin William’s ego into a giant blue hot-air balloon.

There wasn’t a bad song on the whole CD. I spent a few afternoons memorizing all of the fast lyrics to “One Jump Ahead” and “Prince Ali.” I even know the obscure parts of “Prince Ali: Reprise” and “Friend Like Me” (what in the world is a lyric like “I’m on the job / you big nabob” doing in a kids movie?) But every good album has that one song. You know, it’s either the one you heard on the radio, or the one that happens to be about breaking up right when you’re breaking up with somebody. In Aladdin, the song, now a cliché, was “A Whole New World.” You remember, it was the one where Jasmine and Aladdin are out on the magic carpet and touring around the magical city of Agrabah. It’s got these big soaring harmonies that are mirrored exactly by what’s onscreen, and it ends with them falling in love (symbolized in that classic G-rating way, held hands and head resting on shoulder).

When I got the CD home, I ran into my room and closed and locked the door. After listening to the first ten seconds of a few tracks (just to make sure they were there, I suppose), I switched to “A Whole New World.” My mom became aware of a problem after about half an hour, during which time I had neglected to take the track off repeat. She called out for me to open the door, but I bitterly refused. When I finally gave in, another ten minutes later, she found me in tears. I realize moodiness is par for the course for the burgeoning artist, but this was above and beyond the call of duty. My mother couldn’t understand what was wrong.

“I’ll never write anything this beautiful,” I screeched mournfully.

I still haven’t, though I keep trying. Every time I finish something, I hold it up to the perfection that is “A Whole New World.” Would I be up for flying around on a magic carpet with a beautiful woman to the sound of whatever I’m writing? Well, I tried making out with my girlfriend while the computerized voice read this essay back at me; the results were less than stimulating. I guess I still have some work to do.

Short Essays on Favorite Songs, Inspired by Nick Hornby’s Songbook : This Could Be the Night

Short essays on favorite songs, inspired by nick hornby’s songbook : piotr ilyich tchaikovsky’s “1812 overture.”, suggested reads.

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• Brave New World

Aldous Huxley

• Literature Notes
• Society and the Individual in Brave New World
• Book Summary
• About Brave New World
• Character List
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• Aldous Huxley Biography
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Critical Essays Society and the Individual in Brave New World

"Every one belongs to every one else," whispers the voice in the dreams of the young in Huxley's future world — the hypnopaedic suggestion discouraging exclusivity in friendship and love. In a sense in this world, every one  is  every one else as well. All the fetal conditioning, hypnopaedic training, and the power of convention molds each individual into an interchangeable part in the society, valuable only for the purpose of making the whole run smoothly. In such a world, uniqueness is uselessness and uniformity is bliss, because social stability is everything.

In the first chapter, the D.H.C. proudly explains the biochemical technology that makes possible the production of virtually identical human beings and, in doing so, introduces Huxley's theme of individuality under assault. Bokanovsky's Process, which arrests normal human development while promoting the production of dozens of identical eggs, deliberately deprives human beings of their unique, individual natures and so makes overt processes for controlling them unnecessary.

The uniformity of the Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons is accomplished by careful poisoning with alcohol and produces — in Huxley's word — "sub-human" people, capable of work but not of independent thought. For these lower-caste men and women, individuality is literally impossible. As a result, built on a large foundation of identical, easily manipulated people, the society thrives. Stability lives, but individuality — the desire and/or ability to be different — is dead.

"When the individual feels, society reels," Lenina piously reminds Bernard, who strives without success for a genuine human emotion beyond his customary peevishness. This inability is a kind of tragic flaw in Bernard. Even love — acknowledging and cherishing another's unique identity — represents a threat to stability founded on uniformity. The dystopia's alternative — recreational sex — is deliberately designed to blur the distinctions among lovers and between emotions and urges, finding its social and ritual expression in "Orgy-Porgy."

This organized release of sexual urges undercuts passion, the intense feeling of one person for another, as the individuals subordinate even their own sexual pleasure to the supposed joy of their society's unity. At the Solidarity Service, Bernard finds the exercise degrading, just as anyone clinging to any idealism about sex would be revolted. John's sensitive feelings about love suffer even from the representation of such an orgy at the feelies. Significantly, it is the morning after his own experience of "orgy-porgy" that John commits suicide. His most private, cherished sense of love and of self, he feels, has been violated.

In Huxley's dystopia, the drug soma also serves to keep individuals from experiencing the stressful negative effects of conflicts that the society cannot prevent. Pain and stress — grief, humiliation, disappointment — representing uniquely individual reactions to conflict still occur sometimes in the brave new world. The people of the brave new world "solve" their conflict problems by swallowing a few tablets or taking an extended soma -holiday, which removes or sufficiently masks the negative feelings and emotions that other, more creative, problem-solving techniques might have and which cuts off the possibility of action that might have socially disruptive or revolutionary results.

The society, therefore, encourages everyone to take soma as a means of social control by eliminating the affects of conflict. John's plea to the Deltas to throw away their soma , then, constitutes a cry for rebellion that goes unheeded. Soma- tized people do not know their own degradation. They are not even fully conscious that they are individuals.

Both Bernard and John struggle against the society's constant efforts to undermine their individuality, but one character reveals a deeper understanding of the stakes than the other. Bernard rails loudly about the inhumanity of the system. His outrage stems from the injustices he suffers personally, but he apparently is unwilling or unable to fathom a debate or course of action against the malady because he is an Alpha Plus upon whom the process has been at least partially successful. Once Bernard receives the sexual and social attention he believes is his due, his complaints continue merely as a show of daring and bravado. He sees no reason and feels no moral or social compunction to fight for the rights of others oppressed by the social system.

John, on the other hand, truly challenges the brave new world with a view of freedom that includes everyone, even the Deltas who reject his call for rebellion. Although John, like Bernard, suffers from the oppression of the World State, John is able to frame his objections philosophically and debate the issue face to face with World Controller Mustapha Mond because, although John is genetically an Alpha Plus, he has not undergone the conditioning necessary to conform. His objection is not only his own lack of comfort, but the degradation of slavery imposed by the society. John's acceptance of a free human life with all its danger and pain represents an idealistic stand beyond Bernard's comprehension or courage. Flawed, misguided, John nevertheless dares to claim his right to be an individual.

By the end of the novel, all the efforts to free the individual from the grip of the World State have failed, destroyed by the power of convention induced by hypnopaedia and mob psychology. Only Helmholtz and Bernard, bound for banishment in the Falkland Islands, represent the possibility of a slight hope — a limited freedom within the confines of a restrictive society.

The battle for individuality and freedom ends with defeat in Brave New World — a decision Huxley later came to regret. In Brave New World Revisited , a series of essays on topics suggested by the novel, Huxley emphasizes the necessity of resisting the power of tyranny by keeping one's mind active and free. The individual freedoms may be limited in the modern world, Huxley admits, but they must be exercised constantly or be lost.

Previous Aldous Huxley Biography

Next Brave New World Revisited: Further Thoughts on the Future

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• Example of a great essay | Explanations, tips & tricks

Example of a Great Essay | Explanations, Tips & Tricks

Published on February 9, 2015 by Shane Bryson . Revised on July 23, 2023 by Shona McCombes.

This example guides you through the structure of an essay. It shows how to build an effective introduction , focused paragraphs , clear transitions between ideas, and a strong conclusion .

Each paragraph addresses a single central point, introduced by a topic sentence , and each point is directly related to the thesis statement .

As you read, hover over the highlighted parts to learn what they do and why they work.

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Other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about writing an essay, an appeal to the senses: the development of the braille system in nineteenth-century france.

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

Lack of access to reading and writing put blind people at a serious disadvantage in nineteenth-century society. Text was one of the primary methods through which people engaged with culture, communicated with others, and accessed information; without a well-developed reading system that did not rely on sight, blind people were excluded from social participation (Weygand, 2009). While disabled people in general suffered from discrimination, blindness was widely viewed as the worst disability, and it was commonly believed that blind people were incapable of pursuing a profession or improving themselves through culture (Weygand, 2009). This demonstrates the importance of reading and writing to social status at the time: without access to text, it was considered impossible to fully participate in society. Blind people were excluded from the sighted world, but also entirely dependent on sighted people for information and education.

In France, debates about how to deal with disability led to the adoption of different strategies over time. While people with temporary difficulties were able to access public welfare, the most common response to people with long-term disabilities, such as hearing or vision loss, was to group them together in institutions (Tombs, 1996). At first, a joint institute for the blind and deaf was created, and although the partnership was motivated more by financial considerations than by the well-being of the residents, the institute aimed to help people develop skills valuable to society (Weygand, 2009). Eventually blind institutions were separated from deaf institutions, and the focus shifted towards education of the blind, as was the case for the Royal Institute for Blind Youth, which Louis Braille attended (Jimenez et al, 2009). The growing acknowledgement of the uniqueness of different disabilities led to more targeted education strategies, fostering an environment in which the benefits of a specifically blind education could be more widely recognized.

Several different systems of tactile reading can be seen as forerunners to the method Louis Braille developed, but these systems were all developed based on the sighted system. The Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris taught the students to read embossed roman letters, a method created by the school’s founder, Valentin Hauy (Jimenez et al., 2009). Reading this way proved to be a rather arduous task, as the letters were difficult to distinguish by touch. The embossed letter method was based on the reading system of sighted people, with minimal adaptation for those with vision loss. As a result, this method did not gain significant success among blind students.

Louis Braille was bound to be influenced by his school’s founder, but the most influential pre-Braille tactile reading system was Charles Barbier’s night writing. A soldier in Napoleon’s army, Barbier developed a system in 1819 that used 12 dots with a five line musical staff (Kersten, 1997). His intention was to develop a system that would allow the military to communicate at night without the need for light (Herron, 2009). The code developed by Barbier was phonetic (Jimenez et al., 2009); in other words, the code was designed for sighted people and was based on the sounds of words, not on an actual alphabet. Barbier discovered that variants of raised dots within a square were the easiest method of reading by touch (Jimenez et al., 2009). This system proved effective for the transmission of short messages between military personnel, but the symbols were too large for the fingertip, greatly reducing the speed at which a message could be read (Herron, 2009). For this reason, it was unsuitable for daily use and was not widely adopted in the blind community.

Nevertheless, Barbier’s military dot system was more efficient than Hauy’s embossed letters, and it provided the framework within which Louis Braille developed his method. Barbier’s system, with its dashes and dots, could form over 4000 combinations (Jimenez et al., 2009). Compared to the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, this was an absurdly high number. Braille kept the raised dot form, but developed a more manageable system that would reflect the sighted alphabet. He replaced Barbier’s dashes and dots with just six dots in a rectangular configuration (Jimenez et al., 2009). The result was that the blind population in France had a tactile reading system using dots (like Barbier’s) that was based on the structure of the sighted alphabet (like Hauy’s); crucially, this system was the first developed specifically for the purposes of the blind.

While the Braille system gained immediate popularity with the blind students at the Institute in Paris, it had to gain acceptance among the sighted before its adoption throughout France. This support was necessary because sighted teachers and leaders had ultimate control over the propagation of Braille resources. Many of the teachers at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth resisted learning Braille’s system because they found the tactile method of reading difficult to learn (Bullock & Galst, 2009). This resistance was symptomatic of the prevalent attitude that the blind population had to adapt to the sighted world rather than develop their own tools and methods. Over time, however, with the increasing impetus to make social contribution possible for all, teachers began to appreciate the usefulness of Braille’s system (Bullock & Galst, 2009), realizing that access to reading could help improve the productivity and integration of people with vision loss. It took approximately 30 years, but the French government eventually approved the Braille system, and it was established throughout the country (Bullock & Galst, 2009).

Although Blind people remained marginalized throughout the nineteenth century, the Braille system granted them growing opportunities for social participation. Most obviously, Braille allowed people with vision loss to read the same alphabet used by sighted people (Bullock & Galst, 2009), allowing them to participate in certain cultural experiences previously unavailable to them. Written works, such as books and poetry, had previously been inaccessible to the blind population without the aid of a reader, limiting their autonomy. As books began to be distributed in Braille, this barrier was reduced, enabling people with vision loss to access information autonomously. The closing of the gap between the abilities of blind and the sighted contributed to a gradual shift in blind people’s status, lessening the cultural perception of the blind as essentially different and facilitating greater social integration.

The Braille system also had important cultural effects beyond the sphere of written culture. Its invention later led to the development of a music notation system for the blind, although Louis Braille did not develop this system himself (Jimenez, et al., 2009). This development helped remove a cultural obstacle that had been introduced by the popularization of written musical notation in the early 1500s. While music had previously been an arena in which the blind could participate on equal footing, the transition from memory-based performance to notation-based performance meant that blind musicians were no longer able to compete with sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997). As a result, a tactile musical notation system became necessary for professional equality between blind and sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997).

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

Bullock, J. D., & Galst, J. M. (2009). The Story of Louis Braille. Archives of Ophthalmology , 127(11), 1532. https://​doi.org/10.1001/​archophthalmol.2009.286.

Herron, M. (2009, May 6). Blind visionary. Retrieved from https://​eandt.theiet.org/​content/​articles/2009/05/​blind-visionary/.

Jiménez, J., Olea, J., Torres, J., Alonso, I., Harder, D., & Fischer, K. (2009). Biography of Louis Braille and Invention of the Braille Alphabet. Survey of Ophthalmology , 54(1), 142–149. https://​doi.org/10.1016/​j.survophthal.2008.10.006.

Kersten, F.G. (1997). The history and development of Braille music methodology. The Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education , 18(2). Retrieved from https://​www.jstor.org/​stable/40214926.

Mellor, C.M. (2006). Louis Braille: A touch of genius . Boston: National Braille Press.

Tombs, R. (1996). France: 1814-1914 . London: Pearson Education Ltd.

Weygand, Z. (2009). The blind in French society from the Middle Ages to the century of Louis Braille . Stanford: Stanford University Press.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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A Whole New World ?

E vangelical magazine news rarely draws mainstream attention. Last year’s New York Times coverage of the split between Marvin Olasky and World was a notable exception. It was a well-worn narrative: The magazine had been “conquered by Trump.” The launch of World Opinions, a new section on the magazine’s website, by co-editors Nick Eicher and R. Albert Mohler was ostensibly a manifestation of this hard right turn.

As usual, the facts are more complicated than the story suggests. Senior reporter Sophia Lee resigned in Olasky’s wake, but she also contradicted the Times narrative on her way out, tweeting that despite the “terrible” headline, World magazine “had not gone MAGA.” It was further confirmed at the time that funds were not being diverted to the opinions page from the magazine’s straight reportage arm, which Olasky was deeply concerned to preserve.

Nevertheless, in a new retrospective essay , Olasky maintains that the past year has borne out his concerns. He laments the shift in priorities between the “old World ” and the new “Culture-War World.” Where old World covered scandal around a figure like Madison Cawthorn, new World hasn’t touched his latest shenanigans. Where old World toed an establishment line on the pandemic, new World has run stories that Olasky frames as playing to evangelicals’ “anti-vaccine prejudice.” And stylistically, where old World prided itself on “understated prose,” new World columns “toss hand grenades” at the left. Old World was “conservative on some issues,” but it also covered topics such as homelessness and poverty, which Olasky implies would be intrinsically out of place in “Conservative World.” Given that Olasky himself writes compellingly on homelessness for the Discovery Institute —the conservative think tank where anti-CRT activist Christopher Rufo first got his start documenting the gamut of homelessness and poverty issues—it’s not clear why he thinks this. 

But the whole conceit of an op-ed page contradicts Olasky’s framework for “biblically objective journalism.” He defers to the Bible as the only “objective” source on matters it directly addresses. But on those topics the Bible does not directly address, he believes any human opinion is automatically “subjective.” Hence, he concludes that op-eds in these spheres are not the purview of Christian journalism.

Of course, the Bible doesn’t directly address a plethora of topics, including economics, immigration, gun control, contemporary American race relations, and pandemic protocol. Presumably, these are all topics on which Olasky doesn’t want American Christians to remain disengaged. He accuses “new World ” of “speak[ing] authoritatively on questions where the Bible allows differences of opinion,” yet he still prides himself on the way “old World ” did just that on the pandemic, despite all kinds of objective evidence that many reasonable people’s concerns about vaccines, masks, and social distancing were far from “paranoid.”

Olasky can be justly proud of World ’s many achievements in the sphere of old-fashioned, pavement-pounding journalism. There’s room to lament the decline of something unique. There’s room to lament the death of the “long read,” the overwhelming demand for bite-sized bursts of news. And it would indeed be unfortunate if worthy stories are now being suppressed for political reasons, as he claims. (Though he doesn’t specify in the essay exactly who would have benefited from The Further Adventures of Madison Cawthorn, in Forty Parts.) But in its aim to shape and guide reader opinion on contentious issues, “new World ” is not the radical departure from “old World ” that Olasky claims it is.

Fundamentally, the rift between Olasky and World represents a clash of visions—one suited to a neutral-world context, as Aaron Renn would put it , and the other suited to a negative world. In a reply to a student letter , Olasky clearly locates himself in “neutral world,” rejecting “Flight 93-style” conservative rhetoric and holding out faith in the “common grace” to be found even among one’s political opponents. This presupposes a cultural context where the world outside the church is by and large fair-minded and tolerant, willing to disagree with Christians in good faith. Sadly, we can no longer take such a world for granted. James Wood’s critique of Tim Keller’s evangelistic philosophy also applies to Olasky’s journalistic philosophy. Both men flourished in a socio-political landscape that no longer exists. The point in critiquing them is not to say that there is never a time and place for “winsomeness,” or that Christians should not will the good of their enemies. It is simply to recognize that we do, in fact, have enemies.

But, contra Olasky, this tragic vision of our political reality as American Christians isn’t in tension with neighborly love. We still can and should welcome opportunities to invest in our communities and befriend people regardless of their politics. It is perfectly possible to see a hostile politician as an “enemy” while drinking tea with the Democrat-voting cat lady next door. It is perfectly possible to see a militant activist as an “enemy” while befriending the lonely gay recluse who just needs someone to talk to. To understand the culture war is not to abandon the people inhabiting the culture. It is to love them all the more.

This is where World Opinions seeks to situate itself: precisely in that Protestant commentary market gap where incisive cultural analysis and neighborly love intersect, and the cultural falsehoods that lead our neighbors astray are clearly exposed for what they are. This is certainly my own goal as a contributor . It is precisely because not all Christians have the disposition or the calling to be culture warriors that wise volunteers are so needed. This is necessary work, and further, it is work that can be undertaken “objectively”—not because there is a Bible verse for everything, but because God has revealed himself by the light of nature as well as Scripture. Indeed, this is the source of that very “common grace” Olasky emphasizes. By this light, the Christian can walk forward with confidence, seeking the good of the individual and the nation alike.

Bethel McGrew is an essayist and social critic.

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Christopher Columbus and the Discovery of the New World

In the annals of history, few names resonate as profoundly as Christopher Columbus’s. To many, he is a visionary navigator, a daring explorer who courageously ventured into the uncharted waters of the Atlantic, driven by an insatiable curiosity and a fierce determination. To others, he symbolizes European imperialism, whose voyages led to the colonization and subjugation of indigenous populations. This dichotomy presents a tantalizing enigma: Who was Christopher Columbus truly? Beyond the folklore and mythology, who was the man who set foot on the shores of the New World in 1492? This essay will traverse the seas of time, dispelling myths and unearthing facts as we journey alongside Columbus on his epoch-making voyage to the Americas. Through a lens of historical scrutiny, we will attempt to understand this seminal figure’s motivations, challenges, and legacies, setting the stage for a deep exploration into the repercussions of his discoveries.

Table of content

The landscape of the late 15th century was a tapestry of burgeoning empires vying for dominion and wealth. Europe, especially, was in the throes of a profound transformation. Renaissance ideals were fanning the flames of knowledge, art, and human potential. Cities like Florence and Venice were not just magnificent hubs of culture; they were cauldrons of ambition, with tales of Marco Polo’s adventures to the East echoing in their streets.

Against this backdrop, nations like Spain and Portugal were engaged in an intense rivalry, seeking the elusive and profitable passage to the East. The overland Silk Road, though historically significant, had its limitations and dangers. Moreover, the Ottomans’ control over Constantinople in 1453 challenged Europe’s access to the Asian trade markets. Maritime supremacy became the watchword of the day.

Enter Christopher Columbus – a Genoese sailor with a grand vision. Armed with a blend of experience and audacity, Columbus believed the key to these Eastern riches was not by navigating around Africa, as the Portuguese were attempting, but by sailing westward. Though met with skepticism from various quarters, this idea found a sympathetic ear in the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. Columbus’s ambitious dream was poised to become a reality with their patronage.

However, more than the promise of trade fueled this venture. There was an undercurrent of religious zeal, as Christendom hoped to find a route to spread Christianity to the East. Columbus himself harbored such hopes, as evident in his writings.

This chapter sets the stage for Columbus’s monumental voyage, exploring the confluence of economic aspirations, geopolitical rivalries, and personal ambitions that propelled him into the vastness of the Atlantic.

The Journey

In the late summer of 1492, the harbors of Palos, Spain, were abuzz with frenetic activity. Three ships – the Niña, the Pinta, and the stately Santa Maria – anchored side by side were being outfitted for an expedition into the unknown. Sailors exchanged whispers of both anticipation and trepidation. Many were venturing out of the confines of the known world, fueled by a cocktail of hope, fear, and curiosity.

Under Columbus’s leadership, the flotilla embarked on this daring voyage, charting waters that, according to some naysayers of the time, hid leviathans and where the horizon might drop into oblivion. The ocean’s vastness proved to be both a challenge and a marvel. Stars that once felt familiar to these seasoned sailors took on new patterns, and the compass, their trusted ally, began behaving unpredictably as they ventured farther from home.

Days turned into weeks. The monotony of the open sea, with its endless blue horizons, tested the crew’s mettle. Whispers of mutiny began to circulate as land remained elusive. However, with a blend of stern leadership and guile, Columbus managed to quell the rising discontent, promising his crew that they were on the cusp of discovery.

Then, in the pre-dawn hours of October 12th, a cry echoed from the Pinta’s lookout: “Tierra! Tierra!” (Land! Land!). The relentless expanse of the Atlantic had finally yielded its secret. As dawn broke, an island, lush and teeming with life, unfurled on the horizon – presenting a world untouched by European footsteps. Unaware that they had stumbled upon a new continent altogether, Columbus and his crew believed they had reached the outskirts of Asia.

The challenges and tribulations of this voyage were not merely physical but psychological. Columbus’s journey was a testament to human endurance and navigation skills and the indomitable spirit of exploration and discovery. This chapter seeks to recreate the highs and lows, the anxieties and elations, of this historic passage across the Atlantic.

Encounter with the Natives

As Columbus and his men disembarked, they found themselves amidst a world startlingly distinct from their European milieu. This land was painted with the vivid hues of tropical flora and filled with the harmonious notes of unfamiliar fauna. Nevertheless, most arresting were the inhabitants of this newfound land, the native peoples, who looked on with curiosity and caution.

The indigenous tribes, diverse in their cultures and languages, had lived in harmony with their surroundings for millennia. Their societies were intricate tapestries of tradition, spirituality, and communal kinship. From the intricate patterns they weaved in their baskets to the tales they spun around evening fires, these tribes possessed a vibrant heritage.

Initial encounters were marked by a sense of wonderment on both sides. The natives, skin bronzed by the sun and adorned with feathers and beads, approached the Europeans, fascinated by their pale complexions, shining armor, and large vessels. In his journals, Columbus often vacillated between admiration for their gentle nature and a patronizing tone, noting their “naivety” as an opportunity for both conversion to Christianity and subjugation.

However, as days turned into months, the veneer of mutual fascination began to crack. The Europeans’ insatiable hunger for gold and other treasures put them at odds with the indigenous populations. Barter turned to coercion, and coercion soon gave way to violence. Many natives were forced into servitude, their freedoms curtailed, and their cultures derided. The dichotomy of the Europeans’ approach – marveling at the ‘New World’ while attempting to mold it in their image – set the stage for centuries of colonial conflict and cultural erosion.

The Impact of the Discovery

The wake of Columbus’s voyages sent ripples across the Atlantic and worldwide, ushering in an era of transformation on an unprecedented scale. This newly discovered realm, abundant in resources and potential, became the cynosure of European ambitions, altering geopolitics, economies, and societies in ways previously unimagined.

Economically, the ‘New World’ opened up a treasure trove for Europe. Precious metals, particularly gold and silver from the mines of South America, began flooding European coffers. This influx of wealth, while bolstering the fortunes of monarchies like Spain, also wreaked havoc on European economies by leading to inflation and economic disparities.

Nevertheless, it was not just mineral wealth that reshaped the global landscape. The Columbian Exchange, as historians call it, was a vast bi-directional transfer of plants, animals, technologies, and even diseases. Tomatoes, potatoes, and maize, staple diets of many countries today, were introduced to Europe, while horses, cattle, and wheat made their way to the Americas. The cultural and culinary landscapes of entire continents were rewritten, creating a rich tapestry of global interconnectedness.

However, this exchange came with its shadowy underbelly. Diseases from Europe, such as smallpox, for which the indigenous populations had no immunity, decimated tribes, wiping out vast swathes of native inhabitants. It is a somber testament to the unintended consequences of exploration.

On the sociopolitical front, the discovery heralded the rise of European colonial empires. Territories were claimed, borders were drawn, and indigenous populations were often subjugated and marginalized in their ancestral lands. The seeds of modern nation-states in the Americas were sown, often drenched in the blood of colonial conflict and native resistance.

As waves of European settlers arrived, they also brought their beliefs, religions, and ways of governance, forever altering the societal mosaic of the New World. The spread of Christianity, in particular, became a cornerstone of colonial policy, leading to the establishment of missions and the often forceful conversion of indigenous populations.

Modern Perspectives

As the mists of time roll forward, the figure of Christopher Columbus, once celebrated with near-mythic reverence, now stands at the intersection of evolving historical narratives and present-day discourses. Today, as we stand on the precipice of a globalized, interconnected world, the legacy of Columbus is reevaluated through lenses tinted with nuances and introspection.

The earlier portrayals of Columbus, especially in Western education, painted him as an intrepid explorer, a symbol of human tenacity and the quest for knowledge. Parades, statues, and even a national holiday in the United States were instituted in his honor, commemorating the ‘discovery’ of a new land. To many, Columbus became emblematic of the spirit of exploration and the breaking of frontiers.

However, a paradigm shift began to unfold in the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st. Historians, anthropologists, and indigenous activists began to spotlight the darker facets of the Columbian encounter. The tales of exploitation, enslavement, and ecological upheaval started to challenge the monolithic narrative of Columbus as a hero. In modern classrooms and public discourses, the emphasis shifted to understanding the profound human and environmental costs that accompanied the European incursion into the Americas.

Furthermore, indigenous voices, long marginalized in retelling their own history, began to resurface with vigor. Their oral histories, traditions, and perspectives provided a counter-narrative, re-centering the story from one of ‘discovery’ to one of ‘invasion’ or ‘encounter.’ The implications of this linguistic shift are profound, reframing the entire narrative to be more inclusive and representative.

Today, statues of Columbus, once erected with pride, have become flashpoints of contention in some regions, with debates raging over their removal or preservation. These debates are emblematic of a broader societal reckoning with colonial legacies and the quest for historical truth.

Columbus’s discovery of the New World changed the course of history. While his achievements in navigation and exploration cannot be denied, it is essential to approach his legacy with a nuanced understanding. The history is enlightening and cautionary, reminding us that every action has repercussions.

By focusing on the various facets of Columbus’s journey and the subsequent consequences, this essay sample offers a comprehensive overview of a turning point in global history. The aim is to foster a balanced perspective, highlighting both the achievements and the dark sides of the era of exploration.

A whole new world: Education meets the metaverse

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Kathy hirsh-pasek , kathy hirsh-pasek senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @kathyandro1 jennifer m. zosh , jennifer m. zosh professor - penn state university, brandywine @drzosh helen shwe hadani , helen shwe hadani former brookings expert @helenshadani roberta michnick golinkoff , roberta michnick golinkoff unidel h. rodney sharp professor of education - university of delaware, director - child’s play, learning, and development lab @kathyandro1 kevin clark , kevin clark children's media producer & consultant @kevinclarkphd chip donohue , and chip donohue founding director - tec center, erikson institute, senior fellow - fred rogers center for early learning and children’s media at saint vincent college @chipdono ellen wartella ellen wartella professor, school of communication - northwestern university @cmhd_nu.

February 14, 2022

• 26 min read

The metaverse is upon us. Soon it will be as omnipresent as TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook (now Meta). As technology advances to bring us new immersive and imaginary worlds, how we educate children and prepare teachers must also advance to meet these new opportunities. When education lags the digital leaps, the technology rather than educators defines what counts as educational opportunity. This is largely what happened with the introduction of “educational” apps designed to be used on smartphones and tablets meant for adults. Today, as the metaverse infrastructure is still under construction, researchers, educators, policymakers, and digital designers have a chance to lead the way rather than get caught in the undertow. To leverage the potential of the metaverse as a 3D, global, interconnected, immersive, and real-time online space, we need new ways to connect the physical world with augmented and virtual reality (VR) experiences.  

In this policy brief, we offer a path for bringing best educational practices into the metaverse. We suggest a series of well-worn principles derived from the science of how and what children learn to guide the design of new educational technology. We also suggest ways in which design in this new space can go astray. In the end, we challenge those creating educational products for the metaverse to partner with educators and scientists to ensure that children experience real human social interaction as they navigate virtual spaces, children’s agency is supported as they explore these spaces, and there is a real eye to diversity in the representation and access to what is created.  

Imagine a circular classroom, surrounded by white boards and populated with movable chairs. Energized students are mesmerized by the tales of the Greek myths, the power of Zeus the god of the sky, and stories of the great Hercules—his son—whose strength was legendary.  

Suddenly, a timeline is projected onto the middle of the floor. Children whisk away their chairs to stand in the present, ready to move backward and descend into the year 300 BC—a year in which they will encounter a new reality. They enter the metaverse of Greek culture. Carts buzz by them, traders in marketplaces surround them and high atop the hill, they see—with their own eyes—the temples of the gods and the people who worship them. They explore, they ask questions, they ponder, they learn!  

The experience was designed to whet the appetite of the students, but questions remain: “How could we possibly know about the richness of Greek life? If we did not live there, how do we discover what was sold at the marketplace and which gods were all important?”  

Then, the teacher positions each child on the timeline so that they return to the present. The walls around them turn to images of brown dust in which they see ruined old temples and pieces of columns dotted along the ground. Each child is now given a chance to become the archeologist, to use her avatar to find the answers to the question of how we construct the past while nested squarely in the present. The avatars are equipped with a shovel, a brush, and are given a plot to till. The teacher continues, “The society that you witnessed, like all societies of times past, became buried in the dirt. Each layer of dirt is like a story book that you can uncover and piece together.” The children move their avatars and begin to examine the dirt in a new way—in a careful and inquisitive way. Each finds shards of pottery and even partial faces of statues that once stood tall. After 20 minutes of working the soil, they show their discoveries to the others in the class. Opportunities for collaborative learning and co-creation are embedded into the virtual and real learning spaces they have built together.  

Piecing their shards together as if they were solving a historical puzzle, they find an urn and a statue. They learn that the myths are more than stories—they were part of a bygone religion called paganism that real people practiced during time now buried beneath the earth’s surface. Archeologists like them helped to rediscover that society.  

This deep, transferable learning that will last a lifetime comes to us by virtue of the metaverse delivered in a hybrid, guided play environment that could represent the school of the future. But notice that the interaction is inherently social with live people and live moment to moment, emotionally laden interactions. And notice that the teachers are still crucial to this experience. Make no mistake that the metaverse is coming. It is our job to specify how engagement in this always-on, virtual universe augments education rather than detracts from it and how it can preserve the key socially interactive qualities that are core to how humans learn.    

Defining the metaverse  

Forbes Magazine offered varied definitions of the metaverse from tech leaders. Each speaks of a space that is a combination of virtual and live—creating a “third space,” as sociologist Ray Oldenburg noted, that is not home or work.   

The metaverse of the future is likely to fully support augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and the connectivity to link all worlds. Indeed, in its most democratic instantiation, anyone will have the opportunity to create a space and be part of a user-generated global community on an interoperable multiplatform where they can share their games or goods with the world. The G5 internet speed should allow this to be a reality.   

To date there are a few better established instantiations of what is to come, including the games Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox. Roblox , for example, offers a wealth of gaming opportunities and these games have attracted over 42 million active users, an increase of over 19 percent from 2019 . And Roblox creators look to attract followers who will use and then heighten the visibility of any particular game .   

It is critical to think about how researchers can inform designers now so that forthcoming educational products and offerings in the metaverse are high quality and optimized.    

A number of other examples highlight the power of the metaverse that is changing daily. Virbela offers virtual meeting and even wedding spaces. And Nike made news when it created Nikeland on Roblox. As VR platforms become easier to use and more interconnected, they will become better populated. Further, as VR accessories like VR goggles become less cumbersome, one can expect their use to be expanded and even adopted into educational settings. Thus, it is critical to think about how researchers can inform designers now so that forthcoming educational products and offerings in the metaverse are high quality and optimized.    

Learning from Web 2.0 and the development of ‘educational apps’  

In 1997, the Nokia 6110 phone offered the first mobile app (of a game called Snake). In 2007, the app market took off in earnest after the introduction of the iPhone and even more so when iPads came into the marketplace in 2011. By 2015, when our research team first wrote a series of guiding principles for developing truly “educational apps,” the market was already flooded with more than 80,000 so called educational apps; the vast majority of these apps had no research behind their design or implementation that was linked to the science of how children learn. They were designed for platforms for adult use, not educational opportunities for children. Even now, designers use the term “educational” quite freely for products that many scientists think have only passing connection to anything educational.   

In our article, we suggested four principles for creating a good educational app. The principles were drawn from consensus on the science of how children learn. We wrote that:  

• Learning should be active , not passive, and that children learn best in environments that are “ minds-on .” This means that a simple swipe did not count as an “active” move in an educational setting. 
• The app should be engaging rather than distracting and only include bells and whistles that are integrated into the narrative of the game, lesson, or storyline.  Many of the apps on the market interrupted the storyline with a chance to probe children’s vocabulary (e.g., “What else is red or starts with a B?”) and/or include persuasive ads that pop up to distract children to buy a different app.  
• The app should tap into something meaningful for the child. There should be some point of connection that will allow children to relate the content of the app to what they know, rather than to start de novo in a foreign space. 
• Finally, the app should encourage social interaction inside or outside of the app space, not just playing solo. 

In 2018, the list of principles was expanded to include that learning should be iterative, such that an app would encourage children to achieve a learning goal through a number of different pathways or allow for a similar but slightly different experience on each encounter. Lastly, the experience should also be joyful, as children learn better when motivated through joy. Together, the principles of active, engaged, meaningful, socially interactive, iterative, and joyful coalesce in what we called “playful learning ,” an umbrella term based in science that broadly incorporates how children learn through both free play and guided play.    

However, the key to making these apps truly educational requires one additional step. Learning occurs best when the playful activity has a well-articulated learning goal, be it in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), literacy, or “learning to learn” skills like memory, attention, and flexible thinking.   

By 2021, our team led by Marisa Meyer and Jenny Radesky reviewed the top downloaded educational apps from places like Google Play and Apple to see if the principles outlined above were becoming more prevalent in current educational apps available for children. Sadly, they were not. Of the highest downloaded paid apps for young children, 50 percent scored in the low-quality range, with only seven apps earning a score that put them in the highest quality category. Free apps scored even worse. 

The bottom line is that developers of so-called educational apps and scientists who study how children learn are not communicating with one another.

The bottom line is that developers of so-called educational apps and scientists who study how children learn are not communicating with one another, although the authors have tried to make this possible . Even accessible papers that are widely read do not change the trajectory. The lesson learned is that the 4-year gap between the time when apps became a dominant activity for young children and when the scientific community became engaged was too long. It allowed for a proliferation of low-quality materials that were rushed to market. The sheer number of available products also make it difficult—if not impossible—for parents and teachers to sift through the offerings to find truly educational products.  

It is imperative at this moment, while the metaverse is being developed, that scientists, educators and developers co-construct engaging, immersive, and collaborative opportunities that are good for children and families. Understanding how to support learning goals through harnessing the power of active, engaging, meaningful, socially interactive, iterative, and joyful contexts will transform flashy and fun digital experiences into truly educational ones with true social interaction at their core. The experience with remote learning only underscored how important the social-emotional interaction is for children and how it needs to be built into the metaverse from the start.  

Restating the principles of learning  

The principles of how children learn are stable whether applied to classrooms, digital games, or community settings, which includes designing playful learning into public spaces like bus stops, parks, or even the metaverse.     

A range of education stakeholders, including learning and development researchers , educators ,   and employers reached consensus that success in the workplace of tomorrow will require mastery of a  suite of skills or what the Brookings Institution has termed, “ skills for a changing world .” Such skills, like collaboration, critical thinking and creative innovation, broaden our view of achievement beyond core academic subjects like reading and math.  

In a paper published by the Brookings Institution, Hirsh-Pasek et al. presented the value of playful learning for enriching a suite of skills that she and Roberta Golinkoff called the 6Cs . Our claim is that educational products and classrooms have been riveted by attention to content that can be most easily measured and tested. While society surely needs children to understand the basics of reading and mathematics, it demands so much more for a child to be prepared for the workplace of the future. The 6Cs or outcomes are based on the science of learning and backed by a large body of evidence. Collaboration or social relationships are the foundation for an interconnected suite of skills. The following is a brief description of the 6 Cs as presented by Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek in their book “ Becoming Brilliant : ”  

• Collaboration: Collaboration reflects how social engagement is central to human nature as a core for learning, community building, and cultural understanding. Interestingly, recent neuroscience research shows how collaborative play yields unique patterns of synchronized brain activity between infants and adults. These initial collaborations further support the development of young children’s self-regulation skills . Children advance their understanding of collaboration through the elementary school years , which supports academic achievement . 
• Communication: Communication—speaking, writing, reading, and listening—is essential in our daily lives. In early childhood, language skills develop through back-and-forth conversations between children and their parents. When children begin kindergarten, their language skills at that time are the strongest predictor of their later academic performance in language, reading, and math, as well as their social skills. Communication builds on—and is contingent upon—infants’ first collaborative interactions with others in their environment. The ability to collaborate and communicate—together—lay the groundwork for all subsequent skills.
• Content: Traditional content includes reading, writing, math, science, social studies, and the arts, but it is also important to recognize “learning to learn” or executive function skills, including attention and working memory , that support children’s academic achievement. Content builds on the scaffold of collaboration—and particularly communication—across the disciplines, including math , literacy , science, and social studies . While we often think of learning in “bins” (e.g., children learn math content only in math class), a growing body of research shows that executive functioning provides a broad foundation for reading and math skills. Only once children have established collaboration and communication skills can they be ready to master content and move toward higher levels of learning.
• Critical thinking: Strong critical thinkers can evaluate the quality of information they receive and ideally use those skills both inside and outside of the classroom . Yet students particularly struggle with this task when evaluating online sources , an essential skill in the 21st-century. The good news is that critical thinking and the related skill of reasoning can be taught. Critical thinking is preceded by children’s abilities to collaborate, communicate, and engage meaningfully with curricular content. Only once they have that content mastery can they begin to think critically about the knowledge they gain.  
• Creative innovation: Creative innovation—the synthesis of content and critical thinking—enables students to use what they know to make something new and develop innovative solutions to the challenges they face now and in the future . Play directly supports that innovation in both language and art . Moreover, because play encourages curiosity and exploration, it also fosters creativity , which can—and should—be seen as an asset to any job . In fact, creativity is ranked as the third most important skill for employment according to the World Economic Forum . Creative thinking depends on collaboration, communication, sufficient content knowledge, and the ability to engage critically with that content by seeing connections between content and real-world experiences. Creativity enables children to make something new out of those connections—to generate original solutions to problems.
• Confidence: Children who are confident in their abilities demonstrate persistence and flexibility, even when they experience failure. Confidence is closely related to “ grit ,” which is defined as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals” and a “ growth mindset ”—the belief that one can improve her abilities because they are not fixed in time at a particular level. Parents’ attitudes toward their children’s performance—and occasional failure—also strongly predict children’s views of their own abilities, which sometimes leads to the development of a fixed, as opposed to growth, mindset. In this way, children’s interactions with others help to shape their perceptions of their own capabilities. The final skill in the set, confidence, both physical and intellectual, enables children to use their skills in collaboration, communication, content mastery, and critical and creative thinking to push the boundaries of their learning.

Taken together, playful learning provides a checklist for how children learn and the 6Cs offer a systemic checklist of what children learn—or what they can and should learn. Once the formula is clear, it is easy to fashion the digital and live landscapes to conform to best principles for learning. A metaverse can be designed to offer a context and experiences that enable and encourage collaboration, communication, mastery of content, creative thinking, creative innovation, and confidence. Figure 1 offers the twin checklists for playful learning characteristics and the 6Cs—the how and what of learning. With a well-defined learning goal, if designers and educators use this checklist, they can determine whether the virtual space in the metaverse they are designing is likely to be truly educational or merely just fun.

Figure 1. What and how children learn  

Revisiting the previous Greek mythology lesson, it was fun, active and minds on, engaging without being distracting, meaningful in its interconnections, and socially interactive. It also encouraged students to build the project together, to communicate with one another around the content of history, archeology, and STEM. It fostered critical thinking as the students bring the evidence from the dig to bear on their view of the artifacts they find. And in this exercise, they showed persistence in piecing together the pieces of the puzzle—the jug. The learning goal was well defined as one to demonstrate the history of the myths, careful critical reading, and STEM skills through spatial learning and puzzle construction. Finally, the example clearly “jumped” the screen of the fantastical world, when the class re-entered the real world and the teacher, now guide on the side , led the class through the lesson plan, connected today’s insights with what they discovered in their previous lessons, and supported children’s development of skills outside of the metaverse.  

Consider the alternative. A virtual space is created that looks well-designed and is gamified. The graphics are spectacular and there is related content available to explore, but these puzzle pieces do not fit together to result in a full understanding of the times (picture the ability to click on what are essentially Wikipedia articles as children navigate the space). Ads for other virtual spaces abound. Children are given a list of tasks to complete to earn “points” that are linked to a project grade. Teachers log in to ensure that all children meet the minimum requirements, but their role has been minimized as they “supervise” the digital activities of 200 children a year.  These children are solo agents in an attractive space, but designers must note the difference in what Troseth and Strouse call the distinction between attention-directing versus attention distracting features of interactive digital media. Early studies on TV viewing and electronic books in young children show that strategically placed auditory or animated pictures can direct children’s attention to important content and aid comprehension, but that too many interactive features can distract . Educational spaces within the metaverse can align with the science of how children learn. Now is the time to design educational spaces with children at the center.  

Where the principles of learning meet the metaverse: The promise and the worry  

The promise  .

The metaverse is but a context—an immersive one—that can in principle bring the best of digital technologies to bear on education if and only if it is done right, with the science of learning and real children in mind. Dissecting the possibilities, it is clear that games or activities in the metaverse hold the promise of being active rather than passive. Children can explore in this space “physically” and mentally. Whether the activity is engaging or not will be in the hands of the developer. As with apps, there are many products that capture the attention of children, but that interrupt the experience in ways that thwart engagement. Children do not learn when we interrupt a narrative or give too many choices . Thus, designers must be purposeful in creating a story board and having a flow through that board that does not divert a child’s attention to a new and irrelevant task or place.   

The question of meaningfulness should be readily solvable in the metaverse. Indeed, the realities that one can inhabit, if connected well to the child’s real or imagined world, can create a mental web that would support deep transferable learning. In one review, Hopkins and Weisberg ask whether children can transfer knowledge from fantasy in books to real world contexts. Data suggest that they can, though to a lesser degree than if they had learned in real-world contexts; this result also mirrors findings about younger children’s ability to transfer newly learned information from television . Another study , however, hints that children might even learn more from fantasy because fantasy might heighten learning in unusual contexts. In more recent research, Hopkins and Weisberg confirm this hypothesis when testing five-year-olds’ learning of scientific principles.  

The question that is more difficult to ponder is exactly what is meant by creating a social environment for children in the metaverse. The example presented above gives but one glimpse of what this could be if the games created are not for solo consumption but led by teachers for engaging students. Research in the science of how and what children learn squarely puts the foundation for all learning in social relationship building. An infant who is interacting with a parent has well-timed, contingent, semantically appropriate and emotionally aligned responses.  The research suggests that stronger synchrony between caregiver and child supports brain growth and connectivity , as well as early learning.    

Even at two years of age, a virtual agent does not substitute for a real person even if the virtual agent responds in a contingent manner that mirrors the human. Work from our laboratory suggests that at four years of age, children learn more from reading with a parent than they do alone, and measures of physiological arousal and self-reported emotion from the parent suggest a special bonding that occurs between child and parent —human to human. A series of articles in a recent compendium of research on digital versus human learning confirm this assertion.  Finally, even for older children, synchrony plays a role. A recent paper by Lamb and colleagues finds that when elementary school teachers and students are verbally and socially engaged, they not only understand more of the material, but brain activity is synchronized . This is likely just the first of many pieces of evidence coming from this emerging approach of using neuroscience research in real-world classrooms.    

What is so special about social relationships? Why would emotional expression, bonding, touch, smell, and body language matter? Perhaps because they are critical forms of communication that would be absent in a virtual world—or at least in the metaverse as it is now conceived. Note that social interaction could be preserved if the virtual environment served as a prompt for interactions between real people in either the real or virtual setting rather than as a substitute for interaction. By way of example, an intact class that together “visits” Greece with the guidance of a teacher preserves live social interaction even in a digital backdrop, whereas creating a set of avatars to go on a trip together—even if controlled by live students—would not achieve the same effect. More research in this area is critical.  

The augmented reality, VR, and 3D world also holds the promise of porting children to new environments that they could never have explored or visited. For critical thinking, students can solve real problems, enter a makers’ fair and show their wares not only in their school, but to a broader community. They can visit different time periods to bring evidence to bear on age-old questions about Greek culture or even enter scientific laboratories and connect these experiences to real-life learning.  

Students can become creators, even as young children, who paint and compose with the top teachers and artists to assist them. They can even piece together history from fragments and craft their own story behind the Greek myths. From their own classroom, guided by teachers, the metaverse offers a hybrid world of enormous potential if it is done right . And to do that right, teachers and caregivers will play a key role as the guides to faraway places and immersive learning. Only skilled teachers can select lesson plans based on what they have observed spark interest in their students. Teachers can help children navigate in spaces that might bring up difficult feelings (e.g., navigating in a supermarket metaverse that helps build number and money knowledge for a child whose family is food insecure). Teachers can select virtual spaces that they know will help each and every child in their class feel represented. Teachers can help children push beyond their comfort zones and tackle academic and social challenges based on individual’s strengths and difficulties. And teachers and caregivers can link what children are learning with what they already know. The metaverse is not a replacement for teachers, instead, it is a tool through which teachers can spark learning and social interaction in new ways.  

To date, there is little data to help the field forge a direction. Some early research suggested that digital games, including Pokemon GO, could increase physical activity for users by encouraging outdoor experiences . The game also seemed to encourage co-use, and many parents reported that it provided opportunities for family bonding . For example, one study by Jakki Bailey and Jeremy Bailenson of Stanford University and colleagues found that children who see Sesame Street’s Grover in VR are more compliant with his instructions and give him more stickers afterward compared with children who saw the same content on a television screen. However, these same children performed worse on a measure of inhibitory control based on Simon Says—perhaps because the environment seemed so real that it was harder for them to inhibit acting like Grover. Earlier research on VR with young children suggests that the powerfully rich nature of these experiences can shape memory recall , which serves as an important reminder that children’s memories are vulnerable to suggestion . Other work suggests that children reading books with augmented reality were more motivated to read than those reading traditional books, though outcomes from the two sources were no different. And one study with 6- to 8-year-olds suggests that children learned more about physics in an augmented reality environment than in a real one studying concepts like force and friction. Hassinger-Das and colleagues , as well as Hadani and colleagues , provide recent reviews of research on digital technology and child development.  

Caveat emptor  

The rush to market and the enticement of new tools, however, can also be a downfall.  

It is imperative to get the social interaction component right from the start. For children and possibly for adults, the interaction of avatars—even if they look real and are wearing the latest fashions—will never be a substitute for real human interaction. It will be important to find ways to meld the virtual and real worlds in ways that preserve real teacher-child, caregiver-child, and child-child social relationships.  

It is imperative to get the social interaction component right from the start.

It will also be key to avoid distractions. Games in VR environments are chock full of interruptions and distractions. Game builders love to insert bells and whistles—more design is often misinterpreted as providing a better educational experience, but that is not necessarily so. Anna Fisher, of Carnegie Mellon University, found that decorations on school walls can be more distracting than informative. When activities and behavioral interruptions break the flow of book reading, it leads to lower levels of story comprehension. Studies from our labs and others on technoference (i.e., moments when adults using technology like texting or taking a cell phone call interrupt the contingent interactions between parent and child) tell the same story. In those cases, children have been found to learn fewer words , parents to use less rich vocabulary with their young children, and children exhibit more behavior problems.    

It will also be critical to ensure that the child has real agency in these worlds as they explore and discover what they need to do to fulfill the implied learning goal.   

Finally, it will be critical to be culturally diverse and culturally inclusive in any games that are made. Indeed, the metaverse could potentially introduce families to perspectives and cultures that are different than their own in ways that promote understanding.   

We need to also consider issues of access, accuracy, and power dynamics. Many diverse and marginalized communities, particularly in urban and rural areas , may not have access to consistent reliable broadband that allows them to effectively participate in this new metaverse. Because we’ve seen how misinformation and inaccurate content can be spread via digital technologies, we must assure that the systems and games are supported by educational and/or historical content that is accurate, relevant, and authentic.  

The demonstrated and documented shortcomings of today’s technologies when it comes to people of color and marginalized communities show that the metaverse may not be a technological utopia for everyone—from facial recognition software not recognizing and/or misidentifying darker skinned people, to the racial and gender biases in some algorithms, to the proliferation of online hate speech targeting people of color and women.  

As the metaverse is designed and implemented, there must be an intentional effort to involve people from marginalized communities in significant leadership and decisionmaking roles to ensure that all users feel safe and valued as they participate in these environments.  

Back to the future  

And so , we return to the classroom surrounded by white walls that can transport children as if they live in the Magic School Bus. In this world, though, Ms. Frizzle will not be 2D, nor will she be an avatar. She will be a real human teacher, a guide on the side , helping children see beyond their own world into the future and past and even more deeply into the present. In this world, children will have “first”-hand experiences in foreign lands, master a broader suite of skills like the 6Cs, and be better equipped to transfer what they learn into the real world of people and places. The metaverse is coming to education. The question is whether as designers, policymakers, educators, and parents, we can mold intentional and appropriate opportunities that are truly educational within this new and exciting context.   

Download the policy brief»

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Brave New World

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Aldous Huxley

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A+ Student Essay: Is John More Free than the Citizens of the World State?

Huxley presents the World State as the extreme culmination of his era’s infatuation with technology and comfort. However, we are meant to understand that the same government control that provides subjects with peace and stability also robs them of their essential humanity. The horror of Brave New World lies in its depiction of human beings as machines, manufactured on assembly lines and continuously monitored for quality assurance. John, the “savage” from New Mexico, initially seems to represent a kind of pure human being, one whose naturalness contrasts with the mechanization of the World State. However, Huxley goes on to undermine that interpretation, demonstrating not only that John has been socially conditioned just as the World State inhabitants have, but also that his conditioning leads to his downfall.

At first, John seems to represent the fictional philosophical figure known as the noble savage. The noble savage is a primitive human being—usually a man—who grows up isolated in the wild yet possesses an innate sense of morality. John’s epithet, “the Savage,” deliberately echoes this concept, which tends to portray civilization as a corrupting influence rather than an ennobling one. Writers and thinkers who invoke the noble savage often do so to challenge the cultural arrogance of colonizers, just as John challenges the World State’s deeply held belief in the superiority of its system. Crucially, Huxley makes John not a native Indian but a lost descendant of the World State people—visually, physically, and genetically indistinguishable from Lenina, Bernard, and the others. In this way, John seems to function as a sort of scientific “control” in the World State experiment, with all things being equal except the fact that he grew up outside the system.

However, John did not grow up in a vacuum. One of the ironies of the novel is the way Bernard and the others continuously refer to the New Mexico reservation as “the Savage Reservation.” In this phrase, we are meant to hear an echo of the European settlers who derided indigenous peoples as savages or barbarians, unable to recognize that the alien-seeming native cultures represented legitimate, if alternate, forms of civilization. Like the Native Americans of our history, the Reservation Indians of Brave New World have their own set of rules, customs, and values, which John has internalized. He has been taught to value individual strength and masculinity, and is crushed that he cannot prove himself through the traditional rituals of the tribe. The tribe inculcates a reverence for the divine in John, as well as a belief in committed monogamy and a simultaneous distaste for promiscuity. This proves how powerful an influence the Reservation culture exerts on him, for in adopting their views on religion, love, and individuality, John rejects the teachings of his mother, Linda, one of the few people who shows any concern for him.

In the end, the World State doesn’t destroy John for being an intractable non-believer, as we might have expected. Rather, John kills himself when his social conditioning convinces him that he is perverse and wicked. John’s notions of love and romance do not represent natural, inherent concepts. Rather, he has learned everything he knows about proper sexual relations from a book—specifically, the collected works of Shakespeare. While we might see John’s desire for passion and fidelity as laudable, Romeo and Juliet represents just one of the romantic scripts he has learned. At other points in the novel, he identifies more with the title characters of Othello and Hamlet , who express such deep ambivalence about physical expressions of sexuality that they are driven to murder, suicide, and other brutal acts. In the end, John’s inability to reconcile his sexual desires with his romantic ethics leads him to sequester himself in a lighthouse, where he lives in a state of extreme deprivation and self-punishment. John’s value system is revealed to be the mirror image of the World State’s, which freely celebrates sexuality and forbids romantic love; his self-whippings represent nothing more than violent, physical versions of the technological and rhetorical conditioning practiced by the government.

It would be easy for us to see John’s investment in love and individuality as a set of natural principles, since his beliefs seem to reflect our own cultural values. However, to do so would mean perpetuating the same myth employed by World State, which brainwashes citizens into thinking all government-approved feelings are natural, while non-sanctioned desires represent perverse tendencies. In our society, the Reservation, as well as the World State, naturalness represents a supreme value—but each of those communities defines “natural” in a way that suits their needs. Huxley’s novel is therefore not a warning to reject technology in favor of natural living, but to carefully examine what “natural” might truly mean.

Brave New World SparkNotes Literature Guide

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The New World Essay

The New World “The New World” is directed by Terrence Malick, starring Collin Farrell, Christopher Plummer and Christian Bale. The film is inspired by the historical characters such as Captain Smith, Pocahontas of the Indian American Tribe and John Rolfe, Englishman and also all white characters are English male soldiers The film follows a common premise of two unknown nation and cultures when they encounter each other. The film opens from a Native American point of view when they run to the shore to witness the three ships arriving to the new world. In one of the ships, Captain John smith is tied up in chains to be hanged to death for his prior mutiny after they reach onto land. However, Captain Christopher Newport who is the chief …show more content…

The age difference between both characters is inaccurate in “The New World.” However, Pocahontas was young and native, therefore, was completely enticed by Smith. Later on she also fall in love with another white English guy name Rolfe. At first, she does not realize that Smith is cleverer and experienced. The Powhatan people, however, fiercely refuse to accept the Europeans. I would say the affiliation between Pocahontas and Smith was mostly fiction and the film is not historically accurate. To make the long story short, Pocahontas eventually marries John Rolfe who is a settler. Rolfe helps her to make a new life and forget her past and grief of lost. Here he teaches her english and also shows her how to be an English woman. She changed herself from native Indian to English woman. Then they travel to England together and later she’s diminished by lung illness. It has been argued whether The New World movie carries out the idea of noble savage itself. Perhaps, it does a little. The Indians as a whole are idealized in some way. For example, according to the History professor Cathy Schultz, Powhatan's people "were far from the innocent, childlike creatures we see in the film." Schultz points out that Powhatan "ruled by conquest over the surrounding tribes," in contrast to the film's depiction of them as peaceful except where in conflict with the English.

The Fortunes Of Wangrin Summary

For example, the Commandant, and many other European colonists, fell in love with African women and the African men were at a disadvantage. Generally, African women would choose to marry the white man because of the probable wealth and fortune that she could receive. These African women were sometimes able to have control over trade and French involvement in it, when their French husband died (HIST 130, 2/7/18). Another Métis relationship shown in the book is that between Wangrin and Madame Terreau. Madame Terreau is an example of a European settler that came to Africa to make a life for herself because of the poor quality of life she lived in Europe.

Jedediah Smith: Westward Expansion

Jedediah Smith One of the many important people alive during the Westward Expansion was a man named Jedediah Smith. He was from a large family, two parents and 12 siblings. As a child, he lived in New York, that is, until he turned 12, when he moved to Erie County. Eventually, his family decided to pack up, once again, and head to Ohio. Though his time spent there was never documented, it is believed that Smith got a fairly good education and got a job as a clerk.

Settling In The New World Dbq Essay

Settling in the New World provided both the American settlers and the British government with many opportunities. For the colonists, North America provided an opportunity to improve their lives and escape religious persecution. For the British, settlers in North America provided access to raw materials and new markets in which to sell finished goods. This mercantilist relationship continued for several years, until the colonists began to question Parliament’s right to treat them differently than other British citizens. Taxes were imposed on the colonists as a means of helping to pay the debt Britain had incurred fighting the French.

Compare And Contrast Jamestown And Adam Smith

Smith was a very selfish person. The Natives brought him over to the fire and fed Smith their food, and as the Natives took Smith thinks the Natives saw his

Summary Of Early Jamestown

The English use violence to get what they wanted which cause distrust for the Powhatan’s Chiefdom. The colonists brought many diseases with them when they arrived to the new land. This would cause many of them to die and many more would die due to the attacks from the natives. For example, they learn to grow crops or force the natives to grow it for them.

Jamestown Colony Compare And Contrast

One day, when adventuring, Smith got captured by Native Americans that still remained in the colonies. “Leading an expedition on the Chickahominy River, Captain Smith and his men are attacked by Indians, and Smith is taken prisoner.” (Smith 74). As he was captured, he was sure the Natives were going to execute (kill) him. This story of him being captured is the basis of the story Pocahontas.

Women In Powhatan Society

Thesis: The English were a prideful group, entangled in ethnocentrism, that caused a condescending and harsh treatment of the Native Americans, while the Native Americans were actually a dynamic and superior society, which led to the resentment and strife between the groups. P1: English view of Native Americans in VA Even though the English were subordinates of the Powhatan, they disrespected him and his chiefdom due to their preconceived beliefs that they were inferior. “Although the Country people are very barbarous, yet have they amongst them such government...that would be counted very civil… [by having] a Monarchical government” (Smith 22). John Smith acknowledges the “very civil” government of the Natives but still disrespected them by calling them “very barbarous,” which

Address To John Smith Analysis

Most likely, one has heard about the story of Pocahontas and John Smith. However, John Smith was not as loving and kind as he was portrayed. In the letter Address to Captain Smith, the speaker, Chief Powhatan, Pocahontas’ father, takes a condescending tone and addresses to the English settlers, especially John Smith, how the chief’s generous hospitality has not been appreciated. Literary devices such as rhetorical questions, antithesis, and repetition, diction, and pathos and ethos are exercised by Chief Powhatan to address his purpose and produce it as impactful as fully possible.

Atlantic World Essay

The Atlantic world from 1492 to 1750 experienced economic and social transformations due to new contacts among the major continents that bordered the Atlantic Ocean. Western Europe, Africa, and the Americas saw dramatic economic and social changes caused by the slave trade, the increase of trade, and the Europeans “discovery” of America. The Atlantic world experienced great Economic changes created by the new global connections established between continents that allowed the expansion of trades, slave trades, and the claiming of land. Due to the new found connections the participants of trade all over the world brought home new goods, mainly from Europe, and materials previously never seen before or goods they were in need of.

How Did Mary Rowlandson Contradictions

While the English colonizers often saw the Native Americans as a homogeneous group of "heathens," Rowlandson's narrative highlights the diversity of beliefs and practices among the different tribes. For example, during her captivity, Rowlandson encountered Native Americans who were both hostile and friendly to her, and who had different beliefs about the nature of God and the afterlife. She describes how one Native American woman, whom she called "Squaw Sachem," offered her food and comfort during her captivity and seemed to have a belief in a benevolent God, while others taunted and tormented her and appeared to have a belief in malevolent spirits. This diversity of beliefs and practices among the Native Americans challenges the simplistic and stereotypical view of the "heathen" tribes that the English colonizers often held. It also highlights the complexity of the religious and cultural landscape of the New World and the need for greater understanding and respect for the beliefs and practices of different

Early Jamestown Ritual

You are Powhatan people. What happens to one of us happens to all of us- that is why we took care of you after the fire. ” Finally, the reader can piece it all together. There is a cause-and-effect relationship. Since Captain Smith became part of the Powhatan Empire, he affected all of the settlers.

Compare And Contrast Bradford And Morton

Bradford describes the New World as “a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men” (401). He

How Did The Revolution Change The Role Of Marriage In America

In the colonies marriage was a bit different than those in England. White women were reserved the same rights as free black women during this time. The legal presence of women did not exist while married. Men controlled everything by law. Women were under the man 's protection and controlled all the finances even if they belonged to the women.

Summary Of Pocahontas And The Powhatan Dilemma

It is very hard to know what of this time is true and accurate. Camilla Townsend strongly proved that in her book. One of Townsend’s weaknesses in Pocahontas and the Powhatan People, is that some things seemed redundant. I get that she was just trying to make a point, but I felt I read almost ten times that she was in fact only ten years old, in regards to John Smith. The book tells us she was more around 15 or 16 when she was around John Rolfe, her future husband.

A True Relation Summary

And whispers started, neighbors telling neighbors how Smith said the new people were kind and hospitable to him. How Smith said the new people treated him to their delicacies and provided him with provisions on his journeys. How Smith said the new people were respectful, helpful, and friendly. Smith writes about Chief Powhatan of the Powhatan Nation, "He kindly welcomed me with such good words and great platters of sundry victuals, assuring me his friendship and my Liberty in four days... Having all the kindness he could devise, sought to content me, he sent me home with four men: one that usually carried my gown and knapsack after me, two loaded with bread, and one to accompany me."

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A Whole New World Argumentative Essay

The world has gone far from what it was a century ago. As the world grows old, things on it, around it, and under it have changed considerably; many were even replaced by new ones.  As time goes on, man has invented and innovated much on four major human activity sectors: industry, energy, transportation and agriculture. (B Goldstein, 2002)Humans have been blinded by the dramatic changes and improvements on their ways of living brought about by technological advancements, industrialization and the transformation of almost everything in this whole new world For all of these, man has sacrificed his most precious wealth: his health. If we are to unveil the mask of this whole new world, we will see that what we actually have is a set of whole new pollutants- the gravest threat to human health.

In the two independent studies conducted in California relative to the health hazards of exposure to the soot in diesel emissions, researchers has released alarming result figures. In 2005 half a million of work and school absences, and at least 1,100 premature deaths were caused by breathing emissions from old diesel equipment. (Union of Concerned Scientists) So this is our prize for desiring to have this whole new world a highly industrialized one. The birth of high rise buildings, the construction of hospitals and transportation facilities, comes the birth of soot. Soot particles come directly from the tailpipe of engines and contribute to the unhealthy levels of particulate matter (PM) (UCS p.20).

The fine particulate matter “lodges like tiny razor blades deep in human lungs” according to Kevin Hamilton, who have led one of the two studies in California. Particulate pollution as Don Anair of the Union of Concerned scientists puts it is a “silent killer”. What the world gets from industrialization are heart diseases, asthma and cancer. The compensation of development is hundreds of different chemicals from the diesel soot: sulfates, ammonium, nitrates, elemental carbon, condensed organic compound, carcinogenic compounds, arsenic, selenium cadmium and zinc. If one thinks that he can get rid of this pollution by going out of the city, he is wrong. The study even found out 2that soot particles is present at the South Pole.

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Suggestions as to solving this problem include basically replacing the old equipment with new ones. The sad thing about this is that most of these equipment last for 20 to 30 years. That would mean humans still have to have themselves exposed to this pollution for two to three decades before they will be replaced with less-emitting machines. Taking this fact: 3for every additional 10 micrograms of soot in a cubic meter of air is equivalent to 4.5% increase in heart attacks, how many lives will still be sacrificed in three decades? Being also a cancer-causing agent, soot pollution is not supposed to be taken for granted. The California Air Resources Board reported that soot is responsible for 70% of the risk of cancer from airborne toxics. No one is safe and exempted from the deadly effects of diesel pollution, especially those who are living in soot-polluted areas like California. In fact, the 26% increase in mortality rate in such areas is attributed to soot-pollution.

One does not have to be an environmentalist in order to know what is actually going on with the air we all breathe. We do not have to be scientifically inclined in order to understand what these research studies figures are all about. We just have to have a little concern of the future, especially the lives of the children who have no chance of altering their future. Their only choice, if it is a choice, is to live in the world where their parents brought them up: a polluted world brought about by industrialization. I am not against development, nor am I against industrialization. I am against the carelessness of the proponents of this development who obviously have overlooked the long term health effects of these processes.

There is no escape to industrialization- the world, being governed by the laws of the material-driven humans, is inclined to be there. What has been done can no more be undone, and that is the sad truth. But there is a means of deterring the worst scenario: laws that will regulate the further use of soot-emitting engines or equipment.

The government has to genuinely work hard to ensuring the safety of their people, as they are expected to do so. The human health and the environment can no more wait. The best time to act is now. The chance of this growing old world of getting a better place to live in is declining. We can no more turn back time, what has been lost is lost forever. Let us not lose what we still have today.

Works Cites

• Wilson, Janet. “The Dire Health Effects of Pollution Reported.” The Los Angeles Times. December 05, 2006. Retrieved from http://www.topix.net/content/trb/3412963485317685650330925717330288178910 on February 20, 2007
• Environmental Health Perspectives. “Seeing Through the Soot”. Retrieved from http://www.ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2002/110-8/innovations.html on February 20, 2007
• Union of Concerned Scientists. “Clean Vehicles. Diesel Pollution Primer”. Retrieved from http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/big_rig_cleanup/life-of-soot-diesel-pollution-emissions-and-health.html on February 20, 2007
• Goldstein, Bernardo (2002). “Pollution Health Article”. Gale Encyclopedia of Public Health. The Gale Group, Inc. Macmillan Reference USA. New York. Retrieved from http://www.healthline.com/galecontent/pollution on February 20,2007

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Example Of Essay On The New World.

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: United States , America , Spain , World , Europe , England , Colonization , Gold

Published: 02/20/2023

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In the late 15th century, European interest in long distance sea voyages peaked. Christopher Columbus set sail for what would later be described as the new world on August 3rd, 1492. He thought he had reached the Indies and for that reason, he called the island’s inhabitants ‘Indians.' In April of 1493, Columbus returned to Spain, triumphant and with gold from the Caribbean, (Engerman, Sokoloff 42).That is when the Portuguese took an interest of the new world owing to its potential treasures. Pope Alexander the sixth drew a boundary of sorts between Spain and Portugal on the new non-European worlds. This was the treaty of Tordesillas. Spain was to take the assumed East Indies while Portugal was to have the western and northern territories of Africa. The British entered the new world in 1607. This was considerably late owing to other European countries having settled there earlier. They started a settlement in Jamestown. Countries like Sweden, the Netherlands, and France had shown greater interest in the new world. This goes for consideration that at the time (16th century) Britain was not as powerful as it later came to be, so much of the New world was still firmly under the Spaniards. The competition was shaping up. English sea dogs, under Queen Elizabeth’s command, were sent to harass Spanish ships in an efforts to end Spain’s dominance of distant sea voyages. The tides of sea travel changed when the out muscled English were invaded by 130 Spanish ships. Despite the odds, the English drove the Spanish back to their waters. It is highly plausible that a driving force behind the Spanish voyages to the New World was motivated entirely of treasures, expansion of territory, development of Christian religion, trade and to a small part, the love of adventure. Columbus’ voyages were successful in that he brought back plenty of gold from the new world. The Spanish were seeking resources, mainly gold, and silver. The new world was inhabited by natives the Spanish considered inferior, so as far as they were concerned, the gold was theirs for the picking. Expansion of religion was another significant cause of Spanish colonization. The natives were seen as savage heathens that had to be enlightened in the ways of Christianity. Spanish conquest also brought a deep sense of pride and helped assert their maritime dominance over the rest of Europe. Britain had flourished and unlike Spain, their interest was not so much in finding treasures but was more about space for free religious expansion,( Elliott, John). Many people in England felt constrained by the Roman Catholic Church and the many Church of England. England also experienced a population boom due to decreased mortality rates brought about by better nutrition from the new world foods like corn. This population growth, coupled with unemployment and political turmoil, created pressure on the existing English society. America provided England with land on which they could grow produce and harvest other resources from. England was becoming over populated thus making supplies all the more scarce. In their logic, giving another country money in exchange for supplies was akin to enriching that country at their expense. Portugal colonized modern day Brazil after unsuccessful attempts at taking Canada. The Portuguese sought trade opportunities in the Caribbean at first before heading to South America. By vigorous exploits in sugar, the Portuguese reaped financial gains from their new colony. Another major factor in Portuguese colonization was in mining resources with discoveries of gold and diamonds in the 1690’s and 1720’s respectively, (McAlister, Lyle). Portugal sort to be an important economic player in Europe from increased agricultural commodities like sugar, coffee, and cotton. France’s colonization exploits were centered on exports, expansion of territory, mining of resources and military developments regarding forts. French colonies were set up to export sugar, fish and fur back to Europe for financial gain. The French established settlements and colonies in the expansion of their territory. The French also built military forts like Charlesfort on Parris Island completed in 1562 South Carolina, (Dickason, Olive). The French were also motivated by a strong desire to explore North America, and by 1750, the controlled much of central North America. The colonization of the New World was a scramble among the major powers of Europe. Economic boost was an important factor contributing to this, (Engerman, Sokoloff 54).Other countries like England were pushed by the need for surplus supplies and thus extra land required to produce these supplies. However, much of the earlier exploration of the New World was a creation of national pride and glory.

REFERENCES.

Bryan Hardesty. "Book 1: Discovery and Colonization of the New World (1492 - 1763)." The American Testimony. N.p., 2005. Web. 26 Feb. 2016. Dickason, Olive Patricia. The Myth of the Savage: and the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Americas. University of Alberta Press, 1984. Elliott, John Huxtable. Empires of the Atlantic world: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830. Yale University Press, 2007. Engerman, Stanley L., and Kenneth L. Sokoloff. Factor endowments, inequality, and paths of development among new world economics. No. w9259. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2002. McAlister, Lyle N. Spain, and Portugal in the New World, 1492-1700. Vol. 3. U of Minnesota Press, 1984.

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Pasadena Public Library

• “A Whole New Underwater World” — story by Alyssa Ho

One City One Story 2016 Writing Contest: “A Vivid Memory”

Honorable mention

Category 2: Grades 6-8

“A Whole New Underwater World”

by Alyssa Ho

Emperor Elementary School

It was a crisp, clear Tuesday morning as I was dragged onto the beach of Toyon Bay in my tight, tight wetsuit. I waddled backward like a penguin into the clear blue waters of the ocean with huge flippers that made a trail in the sand in front of me. I could not believe they were making me go snorkeling in the ocean when I had never gone snorkeling before! I thought we would practice in a pool or something first, then go out into the real ocean. The cold water was up to my knees now. I turned around, already seeing some of my classmates swimming toward our instructor. I was waist deep in the water now. It was now or never. Yet, I still could not get my body to flip over and swim. I thought about the reason I wanted to go to Catalina Island with my sixth grade class in the first place. I should enjoy snorkeling, but why was I so nervous? The worst that could really happen are getting mouthfuls of saltwater, getting stung by a jellyfish, or bitten by sharks. I took a deep breath, put on my snorkel, and my belly flopped into the blue waters.

The water was freezing. If I had not worn a wetsuit, I would be frozen into a human popsicle. The second problem was:  how in the world was I supposed to swim with flippers three times the size of my feet? I struggled to swim. I swam about thirty feet into the ocean and just like that, my right flipper fell clean off! I stopped and floated like a buoy feeling the panic rise. With a shaky voice, I yelled for the instructor, Alex. I watched helplessly as she retrieved my flipper. Once I had my flipper back on, I continued swimming. Now it was time for step two: to start breathing underwater. I put the tube in my mouth, put on a brave face, and dunked my face into the icy water.

My eyes felt like they were going to pop right out of my face. It was a whole new world down there! There was too much to see. Schools of blacksmith were swimming to and fro underneath me! Garibaldi swimming aimlessly in the water while the kelp danced on rocks. I saw kelp bass, opal eye fish, senoritas, and even a lobster! The lobster was trying to run away from us, and while it was at it, it collided right into my chest. I guess it was too scared to see in front of itself. All in all, it was an amazing sight! So much color: black, orange, yellow, green, and red. I looked down and around, not paying attention to anything else, when BAM! It happened so quickly that if I blinked, I would have missed it all. Someone’s giant flipper smacked me right in the face! I sheepishly felt like that lobster that was not paying attention to where it was going. I there went my mask. I gasped and grabbed for it, but all I got was ocean water. Feeling desperate now, I searched frantically, and then I felt something solid. I grabbed it and pulled it out of the ocean. Fortunately, it was my mask. I quickly put it on, more secure this time. As our group got farther and farther from the towering cliffs, all I could see was nothing but sand. It was like looking down upon an underwater desert. The sand looked like powdered sugar. There were a few algae here and there and one or two fish swimming randomly like they were lost. I felt like I crossed over to the countryside of the ocean. The reefs were like the big cities. I searched for any signs of rays to entertain myself. It was like a game of hide-and-seek. Not surprisingly, someone else found the ray first. We all crowded around to see. To our amazement, it was not even a ray; it was a halibut, or as I liked to call it, a sideways fish. The gray halibut was half buried in the sand when we found it. It was almost perfectly camouflaged, but the bulging eyes gave it away. We stared at it for a good thirty seconds. After the discovery of the halibut, we discovered a bat ray. The bat ray was huge and it looked like it was eating something. A group of fish kept distance watched like sea scavengers. While we were headed back to homeland, I realized how tired I was. My legs felt like rubber. As I got closer and closer, the fewer animals I saw. I felt discouraged as my day was coming to an end, but suddenly, our group halted to a complete stop. There was only sandy bottom when I looked down. I slowly looked down in front of me. I gasped in surprise that turned to excitement. Leopard sharks!

My heart skipped a beat, and all that tiredness swam away from me. There was a whole pod of them. I counted eight. The sharks were like cats prowling in and out through a haze of dust. Their tails were swishing side to side on their massive body. I could not believe I was actually swimming with the sharks. As much as I was interested in them, I kept my distance. Our group cautiously swam around the sharks. Soon they were little specks in the distance.

The sandy bottom seemed to rise as we approached the beach. I let the waves push me the rest of the way. Soon, I could feel the bumpy rocks rubbing against my belly; that was the signal to stand upright. With my back to the beach, I walked up to the shore backwards, back to reality, but still my eyes fixated on the view of the ocean. I stumbled a bit from the powerful waves and remembered for just a moment my fears at the start of this adventure. I smiled.

View:   One City One Story Contest 2016 Winners

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10 Successful Harvard Application Essays | 2023

With the top applicants from every high school applying to the best schools in the country, it's important to have an edge in your college application. Check out our list of 10 new Harvard application essays from students who made it in, and hear from expert college consultants about what made these work.

Marina's Essay

PrepScholar is the trusted source for college admissions and test prep guidance. Our proven strategies and extensive experience translate to real results: PrepScholar students are six times more likely to get into Ivy League and top 20 colleges. Our team of former admissions officers and experienced storytellers guide students through the college admissions process from start to finish to help them get into their dream schools. Learn more and schedule a free consultation today at www.prepscholar.com

Successful Harvard Essay

It's 8AM. Dew blankets the grass under my bare feet as my small hands grasp the metal of the backyard fence. I lift my heels, summoning enormous power in my tiny lungs as I blare out a daily wake-up call: ""GIRLS!"" Waiting with anticipation for those familiar faces to emerge from their homes, my mind bursts with ideas eager for exploration.

Years later, at the corner of our yards, gates magically appeared; an open invitation connecting the backyards of four mismatched homes. The birth of the ""Four Corners"" inevitably developed into lifelong friendships and became the North Star in the lives of absolute strangers who have become family. As parents bonded at the gates, discussing everything from diapers to first dates, the kids took advantage of overlooked bedtimes and late night movies. Today, I launch into adulthood with the imagination, leadership, and confidence born from adolescent adventures.

Endless playtime and conversations fueled the gene of curiosity which molded my creative thinking and imagination.

Behind corner #1 lived the Irish neighbors, where I embarked on a culinary exploration of corned beef and cabbage served during the annual St. Patty's celebrations. My taste buds awakened with the novelty of a peculiar dish that seemed to dismiss the health hazards of sodium chloride, an element that conjures up mental images of chemistry experiments. With U2 playing on the speaker, and parents enjoying a pint of Guinness, adolescents discussed inventions that could lead us to a pot of gold; from apps that would revolutionize the music industry, to building a keg cooler from a rubber trash can (and yes, we actually tried that). Endless playtime and conversations fueled the gene of curiosity which molded my creative thinking and imagination.

Behind corner #2, vibrant Italians cheered on the creation of zip lines and obstacle courses, which taught me a thing or two about Newton's Laws of Motion. Body aches from brutal stops provided lessons in physics that prompted modifications. This inventive spirit during backyard projects required testing, redesigning, and rebuilding. I wanted to conquer the yard and use every square inch of it. My swimming pool hosted ""Olympic Games"", where the makeshift springboard I built would have made Michael Phelps proud. I dove into projects, disregarding smashed fingers and small fires. Through persistence and sheer will, repeated failures became a source of progress for all to enjoy. These lessons served me well when diving into the Odyssey of the Mind Competitions.

Corners #3 and #4, where Cuban roots run deep, entertained countless activities opening a world of learning and exploration. 1AM backyard stargazing encouraged my curiosity; the night sky like a blank slate, ready to be lit up with discovery. Through the eye of the telescope, I traced stars that were millions of miles away, yet filled my tent like fairy lights. Questions merged in a combinatorial explosion that only led to more questions. Could a black hole really cause spaghettification? Do the whispered echoes of dead stars give a clue to how old our universe truly is? Years later, at the FPL Energy, Power, and Sustainability Lab, conversations about smart grids, electric vehicles, and a possible colonization of the moon would take me back to that backyard camping, propelling my desire for exploration.

In my little pocket of the world, I embrace the unexpected coincidence that struck 20 years ago, when four families collided at the same exact moment in space and time. My Four Corners family, with their steadfast presence and guidance, cultivated love, maturity, risk-taking, and teamwork. Through my adventures, I became a dreamer, an inventor, an innovator, and a leader. Now, fostering my love for learning, spirit of giving back, and drive for success, I seek new adventures. Just as I walked through the magical gates of my beloved Four Corners, I will now walk through transformational thresholds to continue on a journey that began as a girl, at a fence, with a heart full of hope and a head full of possibilities.

Professional Review by PrepScholar

Marina’s essay is an excellent solution to a worry that many college applicants have: that if you haven’t experienced dramatic upheaval or overcome incredible odds, you don’t have anything interesting to write about. Marina’s essay draws on a happy childhood in a friend-filled neighborhood to connect to readers through descriptive details and sensory language that allows people who do not know her a firsthand glimpse of the world that shaped her.

One of the strongest aspects of this essay is Marina’s immersive account, which appeals to all five senses: along with her, we can feel the wet, spiky lawn as “Dew blankets the grass under my bare feet”; hear young Marina’s voice inhaling “enormous power in my tiny lungs as I blare out a daily wake-up call”; smell and taste the salty cabbage that “seemed to dismiss the health hazards of sodium chloride”; see the faraway stars that “filled my tent like fairy lights.” The specificity of this language ensures that the essay doesn’t read as generic—it is clear that only Marina (or maybe one of her backyard friends) could have written this particular essay.

Marina’s work also accomplishes well one of the other goals of application essays: using small events from your life to show more broadly some core aspect of the person you are, showcasing a deeply-held belief, the formation of a life philosophy, or a personality trait that has becoming a defining quality. In this case, Marina shows how her backyard adventures revealed a love of STEM that is explored elsewhere in her application. Cooking lessons became “chemistry experiments,” building a zip line is a course in “Newton's Laws of Motion,” and philosophizing about the stars is a precursor for an internship at “FPL Energy, Power, and Sustainability Lab, conversations about smart grids, electric vehicles, and a possible colonization of the moon.” This successful expansion allows Marina both to assert that the roots of her academic passions run deep, and that she has parlayed youthful enthusiasms into significant and meaningful extracurricular activities.

Marina's essay is an excellent solution to a worry that many college applicants have: that if you haven't experienced dramatic upheaval or overcome incredible odds, you don't have anything interesting to write about.

There are still a few pitfalls that Marina could have avoided. One is the danger of stereotype: associating the Irish family with corned beef, St. Patrick’s Day, U2, Guinness, and pots of gold runs the risk of sounding culturally insensitive or dismissive, especially as neither of the other families get this litany of cliches. Another pitfall is using too many modifiers, such as adjectives and adverbs, which can sometimes make prose sound inauthentic. Here, the first sentence, in which every noun is accompanied by an adjective and each verb is a less-used synonym of a more common one, could come across as overwritten.

Simar's Essay

Prepory is a leading college admissions and career coaching company. Our college admissions team is made up of multi-degree academics, former university faculty, former admissions officers, Ivy League writing coaches, and graduates from the nation's most elite institutions. Prepory students are 93% more likely to be admitted to one of their top five college choices and 2.5 times more likely to get into schools with acceptance rates below 20%.

Successful Harvard Essay: Simar B.

June 2nd, 2019. The birth of the new me, or "Simar 2.0" as mom called me. However, I still felt like "Simar 1.0," perceiving nothing more than the odd new sensation of a liberating breeze fluttering through my hair.

At age seventeen, I got a haircut for the first time in my life.

As a Sikh, I inherited a tradition of unshorn, cloth-bound hair, and, for most of my life, I followed my community in wholeheartedly embracing our religion. Over time, however, I felt my hair weighing me down, both materially and metaphorically.

Sikhism teaches that God is one. I asked mom why then was God cleaved into different religions? If all paths were equal, I asked dad, then why not follow some other religion instead? My unease consistently dismissed by our Sikh community, I decided to follow the religion of God: no religion. My hair, though, remained; if I knew my heart, then cutting my hair served no purpose.

Nevertheless, that unshorn hair represented an unequivocal beacon for a now defunct identity. I visited my calculus teacher's office hours, only to be peppered by incessant questions about Sikhism. He pigeonholed me into being a spokesperson for something I no longer associated with. Flustered, I excused myself to the bathroom, examining this other me in the mirror.

Through the simple act of cutting my hair, I left the confines of intolerance, but my experience opened my eyes to those whose struggles cannot be resolved so easily.

Why this hair? This question kept coming back.

I ransacked my conscience, and it became painfully obvious. Fear. Fear of what my conservative grandparents might think. Fear of what my Sikh family friends might say. Fear of what my peers might ask. This hair had usurped my sense of self.

So off it came.

A few days after crossing my personal Rubicon, I flew to India to meet my grandparents.

Breezing through the airport, I perceived something remarkably different about my experience: the absence of the penetrating surveillance that had consistently accompanied me for seventeen years. It was uncanny; I felt as an anodyne presence.

Apprehensively entering my grandparents' New Delhi home some eighteen hours later, I found myself enveloped in hugs. Savoring the moment, I failed to probe why. I recognize now that, in spite of their intransigent religious views, they appreciated that I had made a decision about my identity based on belief, based on being true to my evolving sense of self. I think my grandparents found that admirable.

A few weeks later, dad confessed, "I regret that you did not cut your hair earlier."

I have no regrets.

My hair made me work harder than everyone else simply because I looked different. Sanctimonious people lecture us on having pride in our differences, rarely considering the difficulties which being different entails. For example, a fake Facebook page created by an unknown schoolmate with my birthday listed as September 11th, 2001. Dealing with attacks fueled by ignorance never becomes easier, but such aggressions bolster my courage to face what other people think. In standing up for myself, I become myself.

On some level, I know appearances should not matter. Yet, in many uncomfortable ways, they still do, and they give birth to many disparities. Through the simple act of cutting my hair, I left the confines of intolerance, but my experience opened my eyes to those whose struggles cannot be resolved so easily. This motivates me to never be a bystander, to always energetically take the side of the persecuted in the fight against the powerful.

Over my years of shadowing, I have seen a healthcare system where patients receive inferior care solely on the basis of perceived race. Exposure to this institutionalized injustice motivates me to volunteer with a free health clinic to provide glucose screenings to the underprivileged. We must lead with personal initiative first, starting on the individual level and building from there. Only then can we bring about systemic change to reform the institutions and practices that perpetuate prejudice within medicine and without.

Professional Review by Prepory

From the beginning of this essay, Simar pulls us into a meaningful coming-of-age narrative that, despite being so unique, is universally understandable. The chosen topic is ideal, in that it is not only reflective but enlightening; while not all readers must face the social and cultural responsibilities and implications of belonging to the Sikh religion, Simar brings this struggle to light with intense and moving clarity. Through their story, they delicately weave the unique challenges of their culture and religion into the powerful experience of reclaiming their identity and becoming who they truly are. In doing so, the student skillfully demonstrates that they have the self-understanding, internal strength, and aptitude for growth that are required to break away and reshape the confines which have defined us since our births.

Through their story, they delicately weave the unique challenges of their culture and religion into the powerful experience of reclaiming their identity and becoming who they truly are.

Simar accomplishes all of this with an unwavering, clearly-defined voice, actively resisting the common temptation to exaggerate their struggles with extreme word choice or a melodramatic tone that can come off poorly to admissions readers. Instead, the tone remains very real, always presenting as honest and matter-of-fact in the face of frustration and adversity, providing several instances of real-life experiences, such as airport surveillance, targeted bullying, and being misunderstood by a teacher because of the way they look. Even so, Simar leaves room for symbolism by emphasizing the state of, and their relationship with, their hair through the different stages of their journey, providing a concrete way to conceptualize their development.

Lastly, Simar's essay is a great example of how personal statements don’t need to universally feature “happy endings,” or central notes of light-heartedness and gratitude in order to demonstrate growth. This student does an excellent job of navigating what we generally consider to be a “heavy” topic in a way that is contemplative, considerate, and empowering. They end the personal statement by successfully tying this defining moment in their personal development to their extracurricular experience and even further, their goals and aspirations for the future — becoming an advocate for those who face similar prejudice in the U.S. medical system.

Una's Essay

The mission of Steele Street College Consulting is to educate students and families about the college admission process while making the process as enjoyable and as stress-free as possible. It concludes with the positive outcome of finding the “right fit” college for each client.

The principal factor at Steele Street College Consulting is to truly understand the student’s individual and educational goals. A successful college admissions experience is a team effort, and it is essential for the student to be engaged and “own” the entire process all with our unwavering support.

The first word I ever spoke was my name. I was intrigued that my entire identity could be attached to and compressed into such a simple sound. I would tell everyone I met that my name meant “one,” that it made me special because it sounded like “unique.” When I learned to write, I covered sheets of paper with the letters U, N, and A. Eventually, I realized that paper was not enough—I needed to cover the world with my name, my graffiti tag.

This came to a screeching halt in kindergarten. One day in music class, I scratched UNA into the piano’s wood. Everyone was surprised that I tagged my name and not someone else’s. I didn’t want someone else to suffer for my misdeeds. I wanted to take something, to make it mine.

Kindergarten was also the year my parents signed me up for piano lessons, and every aspect of them was torture. I had to learn to read an entirely new language, stretch my fingers to fit challenging intervals, use my arms with enough force to sound chords but not topple over, grope around blindly while keeping my eyes on the music, and the brain-splitting feat of doing this with each hand separately. Hardest was the very act of sitting down to practice. The physical challenges were more or less surmountable, but tackling them felt lonely and pointless.

I only fell in love with music when I found myself in a sweaty church on the Upper West Side—my first chamber music concert, the final event of a two-week camp the summer before sixth grade. I was nervous. My group, playing a Shostakovich prelude, was the youngest, so we went first. My legs shook uncontrollably before, during, and after I played. I nearly became sick afterward from shame and relief. I was so disappointed that I thought I could never face my new music friends again. From the front row, I plotted my escape route for when the concert finished. But I didn’t run. I watched the whole concert. I watched the big kids breathe in unison, occupying the same disconnected body. I fell in love with music through the way they belonged to each other, the way they saw each other without even looking.

I fell in love with music through the way they belonged to each other, the way they saw each other without even looking.

I stuck with that chamber camp. In the twenty chamber groups that have made up my last six years, I’ve performed in six-inch heels and nearly fallen off-stage during my bow. I’ve performed in sneakers and a sweatshirt, on pianos with half the keys broken and the other half wildly out of tune, in subway stations, nursing homes, international orchestras, Carnegie Hall, and on Zoom.

Chamber music doesn’t work when everyone aims to be a star; it works when everyone lets everyone else shine through. It’s more fun that way. A musical notation I rarely saw before playing chamber music is “una corda,” which says to put the soft pedal down and play on only “one string,” usually to highlight another player’s solo. I don’t need to be the loudest to breathe in unison with my friends, to create something beautiful. In that moment, I’m not just Una, I’m the pianist in the Dohnanyi sextet.

I started to love music only when I realized it doesn’t belong to me. I had to stop trying to make piano my own and take pleasure in sharing it. I learned that the rests in my part were as meaningful as the notes; that although my name means “one,” I’d rather not be the “only.” My favorite compliment I’ve received was that I made an audience member feel like they were sitting onstage next to me. This, to me, is the essence of chamber music. To pull your audience onto the stage, trusting your group isn’t enough—you have to fuse together, to forget you exist. For a few minutes, you have to surrender your name.

Professional Review by Steele Street Consulting

Una’s personal journey with her growth as a musician makes this essay work. She immediately captures the reader's attention with a powerful and introspective statement about her name. The desire to cover the world with her name and graffiti as a form of self-expression at a young age adds an element of curiosity and individuality. Una’s recognition of potential consequences and her ultimate desire to take responsibility demonstrates her integrity and self-awareness.

A strong essay incorporates vulnerability. Una shows hers comes as she explores her journey describing the physical and mental difficulties involved in playing the piano, along with the feeling of loneliness and pointlessness. She also creates a sense of perseverance and determination in the face of her obstacles.

The essay truly shines when Una describes her transformative experience at the chamber music concert. Her openness and profound realization about the power of music to connect people is truly moving.

Una’s essay further showcases her commitment to music through her diverse performances in various settings. Understanding the collaborative nature of chamber music and her willingness to let others shine through demonstrate Una’s growth as a musician and an appreciation for the beauty that can be created through teamwork.

Una concludes the essay with the realization that creating something beautiful in music doesn't require being the loudest or the star.

Una concludes the essay with the realization that creating something beautiful in music doesn't require being the loudest or the star. She embraces the idea of breathing in unison with her friends and finding joy in letting others shine through. This insight reflects her growth as a musician and her understanding of the importance of collaboration and shared experiences.

Overall, this essay successfully communicates Una’s personal journey, her love for music, and her understanding of the transformative power of collaboration and selflessness. The narrative structure, vivid descriptions, vulnerability, reflective tone, and incorporation of the readers senses, reflective tone make Una’s essay engaging, impactful, and memorable.

Georgina's Essay

Admission Science does things differently. Put simply, we’re here to cut through the BS and tell it how it is. Started by two Harvard grads who both got into every Ivy + Stanford, we've walked the walk ourselves. But more importantly, we've now helped thousands of other motivated students get into their dream schools. Come be our next success story. Click here to watch our free online workshop for crafting the perfect application (and download 58 more successful Harvard essays as a bonus).

Successful Harvard Essay: ‘When Life Doesn’t Gives You Lemons’

With the blazing morning sun beaming through the window, I had an inclination to make a stand to sell Lebanese laymounada - a light lemonade flavored with a splash of rosewater. Throughout my childhood, anytime the temperature spiked over seventy degrees, there would be laymounada waiting for me at my Teta’s (grandmother in Lebanese Arabic) house.

At that moment, I scoured the cabinets and secured the glass pitcher only to realize we did not have lemons. To my disappointment, I realized my days of being an entrepreneur and generating revenue from my laymounada stand were over before they could even begin. I sat at the kitchen table, wallowing in disappointment. I wanted everyone to be able to taste my Teta’s laymounada. Suddenly, I had an idea that would either prove to be inventive or a total failure. I would sell lemonade without the lemons. Revolutionary, right?

My six-year-old self would have seen this lack of continuity as a colossal failure, but instead, it instilled an intense curiosity in me.

I ripped off a rectangular sheet of paper towel and jotted down my business plan. I listed the key elements of the business plan: a drawing of a cup, a rose, and the price- “fifty scents”- to correlate with the rose-themed business. I sat outside of my childhood home located in a cul-de-sac of five houses and sold my neighbors a rose drink- a combination of filtered water, packets of sugar, and a dash of rosewater. Granted, I only made about $10 from a combination of my parents and generous neighbors who did not drink the “lemonade”, but the experience allowed me to realize regardless of the obstacle, if you are passionate, you can persevere. Teta’s laymounada was my introduction to entrepreneurship.

The entrepreneurial skills gained from my laymounada stand allowed me to establish A&G Jewelry, co-founded with my sister when I was twelve. This business focused on representing our Lebanese heritage. Using supplies we found around our house and from our local craft store, we created a variety of pieces that featured traditional Middle Eastern coins, beads, and clay baked into the shape of Lebanon. My sister and I collaborated to create marketing tools to promote our new business. Before we knew it, A&G Jewelry had earned a spot at my church’s annual Lebanese festival. After tirelessly marketing and selling our jewelry for three days straight, we had made over $900 in revenue, which we decided to donate to the church.

Entrepreneurship took a new form in high school when my sister and I founded our second partnership, The Model Brockton City Council. We saw a need to engage our peers in local government by designing a simulation of our city council. We had to collect signatures, present to many administrators, and market our new club. The initial goal to have more people try my lemonade resonated with me as I strived to have more people engage in their civic duties. Today, over twenty-five of my classmates frequently attend my meetings.

With my first business venture selling laymounada, I made $10; with A&G Jewelry, $900; with the Model Brockton City Council, the revenue amounted to $0. Although there was not a financial gain, I attained experience as a negotiator, problem solver, creative thinker, and most importantly, I became persistent.

Twelve years have passed since that summer day with my “laymounada,” and I have yet to maintain a long-lasting business. My six-year-old self would have seen this lack of continuity as a colossal failure, but instead, it instilled an intense curiosity in me. Little did I know the experience would remain so vivid after all these years. It has continued to push me, compelling me to challenge myself both academically and entrepreneurially. As I grow older, my intrinsic drive to have a lemonade stand, regardless of whatever obstacles come my way, persists as a deep-seated love of business.

When life doesn’t give you lemons, still make lemonade (or laymounada, as my Teta would say).

Professional Review by Admission Science

Many successful college essays follow a simple formula: Hook + Anchor + Story + Growth. While the specifics may vary, you’ll have a compelling essay if you can include each of these four elements.

Hook: The job of the “hook” is to draw the reader in. Admissions officers read hundreds of essays every day, so try to grab their attention right away. Start your essay with something intriguing or different.

Georgina’s hook is her “laymounada” stand. What’s so special about Lebanese laymounada? How’s it different from regular lemonade? Who’s Teta? Georgina piques the reader's curiosity with her cultural twist on the classic lemonade stand story.

Anchor: The “anchor” is an idea or theme that connects the entire essay, giving it meaning. A great anchor is thought-provoking, leaving readers feeling satisfied after finishing the piece.

Georgina nails all four of these key elements—hook, anchor, story, and growth—and that's why this essay succeeds.

Georgina’s anchor is the idea that life did not give her lemons. She couldn’t find a single lemon in her home, so she had to get creative and sell lemon-free laymounada. This experience taught her perseverance, leading to a string of other entrepreneurial ventures. Finally, the essay returns to this anchor to tie everything together: “When life doesn’t give you lemons, still make lemonade (or laymounada, as my Teta would say).”

Story: When it comes to telling a story, the golden rule is “show, don’t tell.” Don’t just tell admissions officers what a great person you are. Instead, try to show them your personality, character, and accomplishments through your story.

In Georgina’s story, she shares all the colorful details that made her lemonade stand experience memorable for her. For example, she sprinkles in fun details like pricing her drink as “fifty scents” to fit the rose theme. She also jokes that the $10 she made mostly came from supportive parents and generous neighbors who didn’t even bother drinking the “lemonade.”

These details paint Georgina as fun, creative, and enterprising, while also showing her humility. She also does a great job weaving in how she was driven to make an impact on her community: “After tirelessly marketing and selling our jewelry for three days straight, we had made over $900 in revenue, which we decided to donate to the church.”

Growth: All great college essays clearly show how you’ve grown from your experiences. Be sure to highlight what you’ve learned or gained from your experiences.

For example, Georgina learned that her lack of continuity in her business ventures was not a "colossal failure." Instead, it cultivated her curiosity, ability to persist, and love of business. By the end of the essay, it’s clear that Georgina is someone who’s passionate (about business), with a track record of carving out her own path. She’s able to take lessons from each experience and apply them in her next endeavors.

Georgina nails all four of these key elements—hook, anchor, story, and growth—and that’s why this essay succeeds.

Abby's Essay

JK Essays is run by me- Jacob Katz. I'm a recent Princeton graduate who helps students achieve admission into America's top universities. Each year, I provide concierge, one-on-one guidance to a handful of ambitious high school seniors. My students receive my personal phone number, and I never outsource their essays to be reviewed by others. I founded my consultancy because I love crafting stories and encouraging students to discover their voices. Above all, I love helping students turn their "reach" into their reality.

Barreling through the hallowed, mahogany double doors, I was on a mission. I made a beeline for the back. Behold, a panoply of new prospects, each beckoning me to read them.

Every weekend, my father, my sister, and I make the pilgrimage to Book Mecca. The sensations one meets upon entering Barnes and Noble are unmatched. The aroma of coffee mingles with the crisp perfume of unopened books, and the tinny music drifts from the ceiling speakers, coalescing with the clanking of the Cafe equipment, which is intermittently overcome by the barista's peppy voice on the PA system announcing the latest limited-edition dessert. Where else can one enjoy a triple-layer cheesecake among bookstacks? As Virginia Woolf says, "one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."

My family, however, dines on knowledge. To us, Barnes and Noble is an all-you-can-eat buffet for the mind. After we snag our favorite corner table, I sit, like metal to a magnet, immovable for hours.

I may delve into an Agatha Christie novel and attempt to outwit Detective Poirot; though I never win, I find the sleuthing remarkably similar to analyzing confounders the culprits of unexpected results-in my clinical research. Alternatively, I may crack open an atlas to test my memory from the summer when I memorized the entire world map. Or, I might read Animal Farm to better understand the system that ravaged Ethiopia in the late 20th century and forced my grandfather to flee his own village.

United by their good humor and love for Barnes and Noble, this unlikely group teaches me that a community can form around anything

Complimenting this mission to satisfy our voracious minds comes an equally important fulfillment: engaging with the coterie of miscellaneous characters we have befriended. After visiting the same Barnes and Noble for eleven years, we have forged friendships with several regulars, including a retired teacher couple, an octogenarian with a seven-year-old brother, and an eternally sunburned man named George who shelters feral cats at his pool company's office. After a dear Barnes and Noble-goer passed away, my heart was comforted when I read in her obituary that she, indeed, would be missed by "the old [bookstore] gang." United by their good humor and love for Barnes and Noble, this unlikely group teaches me that a community can form around anything, no matter how disparate the members are. They show me that, in Aristotle's words, "educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all."

While I have the luxury of Barnes and Noble, my father's reality growing up in rural Ethiopia bears a stark contrast and defines my legacy of education. He received a meager education in a laughable schoolhouse, using sunlight to study by day, and the moonlight by night. When he was nine, my grandfather opened a school so my father could continue beyond 4th grade, unlike many of his peers. My grandfather had no formal education, yet he knew the country's constitution by heart and exhorted nearby villages to educate their children.

My father's dedication to chauffeuring me to the bookstore and the library is an artifact of his father's same dedication. And I am the accumulation of this legacy. Behind me are all of the sacrifices and payoffs of my family's dedication to education, and before me is a lifetime of opportunity and fulfillment. Though I have never met my grandfather, I feel an incredibly palpable connection to him through our shared fervor to learn and teach. My father's and grandfather's stories remind me that education is not a commodity for many, but a privilege that I treat as such. I cherish all of my education's wonderful consequences: the obscure curiosities I have indulged in, the strong sense of identity I have developed, the discernment and morals I have bolstered, the respect I have gained for different viewpoints, and the ambition for excellence that I have inherited and extended. They are what fuel me, my college education, and my drive to pay it forward.

Professional Review by JK Essays

Abby's essay is excellent. Here's what she did and how you can do it too:

Abby utilizes a method which I call the "aisle essay." Imagine pushing a shopping cart through a grocery store, selecting your favorite foods and organizing them in your cart. The "aisle essay" is where the writer pushes a proverbial shopping cart through her past, present, and future, collecting her anecdotes, interests, and values, along the way. Think of the cart as the essay's setting. Abby's cart is Barnes & Noble. The steadfast setting grounds the essay in some easily-pictured world, allowing Abby to reach into different facets of her life without making the essay seem scattered.

As long as each subtopic in your essay is found in your cart, the essay will read as a unified, logical piece.

The aisle essay is where the writer pushes a proverbial shopping cart through her past, present, and future

In Abby's case, she uses the library's books and its Cafe to masterfully pivot towards her personal narrative. The detective novels recall her "clinical research." Mentioning Animal Farm allows her to bring up her grandfather's extraordinary story. By describing the quirky community she formed in the Cafe, Abby shows us that she is a people person, excited by connection and remembered by those she meets. So, while this essay took place in a Barnes & Noble, that's hardly what it's about. Barnes & Noble is only a staging ground to tell us about Abby.

Abby concludes the essay with what is clearly a core value: gratitude. She does not go overboard, dramatically claiming that she will change or save the world. Instead, she just gives a glimpse of who she really is: a fiercely curious girl who frequents a bookstore - someone who is inspired by her past and barreling through the mahogany doors of her future.

Can you think of a setting which is quintessentially you? Which interests and values will you grab off the shelves in your aisle essay?

Amy's Essay

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Successful Harvard Essay: ‘The Color of Everything’

There’s a theory that even though each color has a specific wavelength that never changes, how people perceive a specific color may have subtle differences based on small differences in photoreceptors, and the color that one person might consider red might still be red in another’s mind but could look different— a little duller, softer, cooler. Furthermore, how a person’s brain processes the color may also be linked to that person’s environment. Some studies have suggested that color sensitivity could be linked to one’s native languages: for example, people who speak languages that have specific names for eleven colors are able to easily distinguish those eleven colors, but people who speak languages with fewer color specific words may have a harder time distinguishing them.

So it appears that even at the most elementary level of sight, the world is not an objective thing. Instead, what we know and what we remember can influence what and how we see. The color blue may just be the color blue to a three year old, perhaps her favorite color even, but an adult might connect it to so much more—the lake by his childhood home or the eye color of a loved one.

Knowledge is color; it is depth, and it is seeing a whole new world without having to move an inch.

I first consciously became aware of the power that our experiences have to change perception when I went to turn on a light in my house after learning about photons in class. What had previously been a mundane light suddenly became a fascinating application of atomic structure, and I thought that I could almost perceive the electrons jumping up and down from energy level to energy level to produce the photons that I saw. I then realized that my world had steadily been changing throughout my years in school as I learned more and more. I now see oligopolies in the soda aisles of the supermarkets. I see the charges warring with each other in every strike of lightning, and the patterns of old American politics still swaying things today. Knowledge and making connections with that knowledge is the difference between seeing the seven oceans glittering in the sun and merely seeing the color blue. It’s the difference between just seeing red and seeing the scarlet of roses blooming, the burgundy of blood pumping through veins, and crimson of anger so fierce that you could burst. Knowledge is color; it is depth, and it is seeing a whole new world without having to move an inch.

It is knowledge, too, that can bring people together. I love listening to people’s stories and hearing about what they know and love, because if I learn about what they know, I can learn how they see the world; consequently, since behavior is often based upon perception, I can understand why a person behaves the way they do. On a road trip during the summer, my mom kept looking up at the streetlights lining the highways. When I asked why, she told me that whenever she saw lights by a highway she would wonder if her company had made them. She would guess how tall they were, how wide, and what style they were. She told me that ever since she started working for her company, lights no longer were just lights to her. They were a story of people who first had to measure the wind speed to figure out what dimension the lights had to be, and then of engineers, of money passing hands—possibly even under her own supervision as an accountant—and then of transportation, and of the people who had to install them. I might never perceive lights the exact way my mother does or see her “red” but by hearing her describe what she knows, I can understand her world and realize her role in ours.

Beauty and color are in the world, but it is seeking the unknown and making new connections that unlocks them from their greyscale cage.

Professional Review by MR. MBA®, Val Misra

Amy crafts a standout, thought-provoking essay centered on ‘intellectual curiosity’ using vivid, descriptive language to connect intriguing scientific theories, studies on colors and sight to showcase how our limited or expansive knowledge can shape our reality and experiences. Evident throughout the essay is Amy’s continuing passion and growth to learn and connect her knowledge to her surroundings to find hidden truths. That one can seek to understand another’s behavior or perception by learning their knowledge or story is a simple yet deeply profound, macro theme- the curiosity for knowledge, truth, sharing ideas and experiences can undeniably bring many people together. I am reminded of the discoverer of special and general relativity Albert Einstein’s famous self-quote: “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

The essay is very well-structured; each paragraph further illuminates Amy's thirst for new information and connection.

The essay is very well-structured; each paragraph further illuminates Amy’s thirst for new information and connection. In paragraphs 1-2, she begins with a fascinating scientific backdrop of how colors, despite having a particular wavelength, can be visually different to two people based on the number of languages they know. This is captivating; I want to read more! She seamlessly ties theories and studies on colors to deduce that our world is not a one-size-fits-all journey and our individual education, experiences can change what we see and how.

In paragraph 3, Amy exemplifies her first ‘A-ha’ moment, realizing and visualizing her classroom learning of the true scientific process of photon particles emanating from her “mundane light”! Her sponge-like mind, soaking in new streams of data within her growing world, begins connecting everyday activities to big-picture ideas- economics, natural phenomenon, and politics. This is very well explicated!

Paragraph 4 is a gamechanger. Her education-to-social-understanding mantra further enlightens us: education, open-mindedness and learning about others’ stories, experiences can indeed create bridges between seemingly different worlds. Amy provides a final example using her own mother’s awareness of highway streetlights to show that anyone can connect their knowledge, experiences with their environment. Amy closes superbly imparting wisdom from her own life and clear introspection for “seeking the unknown and making connections.”

Overall, Amy builds to a potent conclusion: Education, empathy, listening, understanding, and connecting, all drive her intellectual passion for life. Citing her desire to understand all things, especially people, Amy portrays herself as a passionately curious and likable student- an ideal addition to a vibrant academic community.

Samantha's Essay

Artie Smith is a former advising and admissions dean who also coached Division I track at Duke and Cornell for 23 years. Through his company, Arthur Smith Advising , he now helps high school students and their families navigate the college admissions and application process. Artie earned his BA from Cornell University and his MA and PhD from Duke University.

Artie worked in undergraduate admissions at Cornell for 15 years. As an assistant dean, he chaired admissions committees for the College of Arts and Sciences, and had a number of other university-wide admissions duties.

His career in higher education has also been defined by a highly successful 23 years of coaching track and field and cross country at the Division I level. A nationally recognized distance coach who worked with 3 Olympians, 19 All-Americans, 31 Ivy League champions, and 12 Eastern champions while coaching 19 Ivy League Championship teams, Artie was Cornell’s head women’s track and field and cross country coach.

During his time in the Ivy League, Artie chaired admissions committees and evaluated over 20,000 applications; served as a faculty advisor and advising dean; managed the TransAtlantic Series, an exchange between Cornell University and Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the United Kingdom; and mentored hundreds of student-athletes.

Successful Harvard Essay: Samantha C.

I’ve always been a storyteller, but I’ve only been an alleged fish killer since age five. As a child, my head was so filled up with stories that I might have forgotten to feed Bubbles the class pet just one time too often. Once I pulverized an entire pencil, because I was daydreaming instead of taking it out of the sharpener.

More than anything else, I became an obsessive list-maker. I memorized and wrote down long lists of my stuffed animals, cities around the world, and my favorite historical time periods. I created itineraries and packing lists for my Build-A-Bears, then arranged them in rows on a pretend airplane. I drew family trees for a made-up family during the Industrial Revolution. I wrote lists until the spine of my notebook cracked under the weight of graphite.

For a long time, I thought this was something that I alone did, and that I did alone. Lying on the floor of my bedroom, I spun fantastical stories of mundane events. Each story opened and closed in my head, untold and unsung.

Now, stories connect me to the world, creating communities instead of pulling me away from them.

Years later, though—to my amazement—I discovered other people who were interested in the same things I was. Wandering into fanfiction websites and online forums, I was welcomed into a vibrant community of writers—serious, silly, passionate people who wrote hundreds of thousands of words analyzing character dynamics and exploring endless plot threads. When I finally started posting my own thoughts, I didn’t feel like I was taking a risk or venturing into new territory. I had been speaking these words to myself since I was five, preparing myself to finally shout them into the real world. And people responded.

Spurred on by this excitement, I started writing stories for other people to read. I had fallen in love with the community writing had given me, and with writing itself. I wanted to contribute my own small piece to a world much bigger than me. I shouted my stories up to the WiFi signals that caught and carried them, waiting to be found by someone else writing lists in her bedroom alone.

In high school, I also found joy in editing. I loved analyzing, polishing, and curating my classmates’ short stories, poems, and artwork to make them shine for my school’s literary magazine. I spent hours with other editors, passionately arguing the merits and weaknesses of dozens of writing pieces. Editing the school newspaper, meanwhile, became a way to spotlight members of the school community, from profiling new staff and faculty to polling the student body about the stigma surrounding menstruation.

I’ve now had my poems published in a national literary journal and have joined the editorial staff of an international literary magazine for teens. I feel like I’m discovering my power, and with it my ability to create change. Last year, I founded SPEAK, a creative writing program for elementary school students. I wanted to assist younger writers so they could create their own communities. During SPEAK sessions, I taught a group of students how to draw a map of a fantasy wolf kingdom they had designed, helped a girl edit her classmate’s poem about hula hoops, and listened to a third-grader talk faster and faster as we discussed the meaning of soup in The Tale of Despereaux.

I’ve now turned SPEAK into a self-sustaining club at my school, and I’m expanding the program onto an online platform. Writing changed my life, but it only happened when I started sharing my work, putting it out there, and starting conversations—not just responding. Alone, stories used to abstract me from the outside world. Now, stories connect me to the world, creating communities instead of pulling me away from them. For too many of us, our stories are born in our heads, and they die there. I’m going to change that, for myself and for as many people as I can bring with me.

Professional Review by Arthur Smith

I love this essay! After the first sentence, I wanted to read more. By the end of the third sentence, I was already eager to meet this student!

But above all there is a narrative thread of growth.

This essay succeeds because we not only get insight into their innate curiosity and imagination but we get a sense of their personal growth. We see the student becoming more confident and finding their place in the larger community. The pop culture and historical allusions are a nice touch which humanize the writing while making it eminently readable. But above all there is a narrative thread of growth. The student sprinkles in occasional accomplishments that are milestones of that growth, but it doesn't feel like a resume or contrived list… it all fits together at the end as we get a sense of their creative process and the importance of story in their life.

Curious, creative, concerned about others... and a sense of personal growth. Lots of great themes and personal attributes that make the reader not only like this student but want to meet them.

Connor's Essay

As an admission essay specialist , Dan Lichterman has been empowering students to find their voice since 2004. He helps students stand out on paper, eliminating the unnecessary so the necessary may speak. Drawing upon his storytelling background, Dan guides applicants to craft authentic essays that leap off the page. He is available for online writing support within the US and internationally. To learn more and schedule a brief complimentary consultation visit danlichterman.com.

Successful Harvard Essay: Waking Up Early

Getting out of bed in the middle of a long, New Hampshire winter was never easy, but some mornings were especially difficult. On those particularly tough mornings, when the temperature could no longer be measured in the comfortable world of positive numbers, my dad would be up before the sun. He would turn on the gas fireplace in his bedroom, carry milk, cereal, bowls and spoons upstairs, and then wake up me and my siblings. We would wrap ourselves in blankets as we ate our breakfast by the fire. I would complain about having to wake up early, never considering that my dad had been up long before.

Every morning for years he woke me up, packed my lunch, and drove me to school. He helped me with homework, coached my soccer team and taught me how to ski. Even as I’ve gotten older and started to pour my own cereal, my dad hasn’t stopped waking up early. He gets up long before my alarm clock even thinks about waking me, walks to his office (a desk, chair and laptop situated above our garage) and starts to work. He works nearly every day, only taking the occasional break to engage in such leisure activities as splitting wood and mowing the lawn. As I’ve grown older I’ve looked up to him more and more.

There have been times in the past four years when I’ve come home with seemingly unbearable amounts of homework and I’ve thought, “I could settle for a B on this essay” or “How important really are the laws of thermodynamics?” On those late nights, when I’m on the verge of trading my notebooks in for a tv remote, I think about my dad. I think about how hard he’s worked to make my life easier, and I realize that mediocrity isn’t a viable option. I go downstairs, pour myself a glass of ice water, turn on some music, and get back to my work.

On those late nights, when I'm on the verge of trading my notebooks in for a tv remote, I think about my dad.

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine my dad being young, but twenty-nine years ago, my dad was entering his senior year at Gilford High School. He had won a soccer championship under head coach Dave Pinkham, and was on track for another title that year. He was doing lawn care with his brother to make some extra money, and dreading the speech he would have to make at graduation.

I am now entering my senior year at Gilford High School. I won a soccer championship under the same Dave Pinkham as a sophomore, and hopefully I’m heading toward another this year. I’m running Leggett Lawn Care (which, despite its two unofficial part-time employees, has not yet gone public) and denying the inevitability of the speech I have to make this June. I’m keeping up my grades and trying to emulate my dad by putting others first. I teach Sunday School at my church, support the freshmen and sophomores on my soccer team, and give up countless hours of sleep helping my classmates with calculus. It’s now my turn to go out into the world and figure out what I want to do and who I want to become. I don’t know exactly where I see myself in five years; I don’t even know which state I’ll be living in next fall. I do know though that if I’m half the man my father is, (which genetically I am) I’ll have the strength and humility that I need to selflessly contribute to the world around me.

Professional Review by Dan Lichterman

In an attempt to break through admission readers’ attention economy, many candidates reach for an unusual topic. Yet an essay can have impact even when the topic itself is more universal. Applicants who address familiar topics must find ways to bring specificity and self- insight to their narrative, enabling the particularity of their experiences to resonate anew.

It is no small feat that Connor has been able to take a story about finding inspiration in a parent’s example and make it thoroughly his own. His essay evokes a rustic upbringing rooted in grit and humility. Connor paints a visceral and unforgettable image of a sub-zero New England morning in which his father has brought breakfast upstairs so that Connor and his siblings can eat, wrapped in blankets, alongside a gas fireplace in the father’s bedroom. The vignette powerfully encapsulates both the cozy warmth within Connor’s home life and the father’s inspiring stoicism, “I would complain about waking up early, never considering my dad had been up long before.”

The essay goes on to illustrate the father’s selfless dedication to his family (“only taking the occasional break to engage in such leisure activities as splitting wood and mowing the lawn”). While many students may admire their parents’ sacrifices, Connor’s recounting of his dad’s work ethic and values feels genuine because of its conversational style. By the time Connor tells us that he’s grown to look up to his father’s inexhaustible spirit more and more, we know precisely what he means.

Connor's recounting of his dad's work ethic and values feels genuine because of its conversational style.

Personal statements that address the topic of role models often risk taking the spotlight away from the actual candidate seeking admission. Connor avoids this pitfall by redirecting the focus entirely back to himself halfway through his word count. He credits his own academic tenacity to his father’s example, “when I’m on the verge of trading my notebooks in for a tv remote, I think about my dad.” There is power within such simple phrasing and we recognize that Connor is writing from the heart, rather than from the thesaurus. He then draws parallels between his father’s Gilford High School years and his own–from successful soccer championships, to part-time lawn care, to graduation speeches. Connor’s playful aside about Legget Lawn Care remaining a privately owned company perfectly suits his theme of an intergenerational legacy grounded in small town community life.

The unconditional acts of service Connor admires in his father are paid forward in Connor’s own church teaching, soccer support, and Calculus tutoring. This connection feels understated rather than resume grandstanding, particularly when paired with Connor’s earnestness about the uncertainties of leaving Gilford behind. This essay’s success makes a clear case for the value of not overselling yourself and for the capacity of a single well-told anecdote to evoke an entire childhood.

Tony's Essay

Successful harvard essay: beauty in complexity.

Gazing up at the starry sky, I see Cygnus, Hercules, and Pisces, remnants of past cultures. I listen to waves crash on the beach, the forces of nature at work. Isn’t it odd how stars are flaming spheres and electrical impulses make beings sentient? The very existence of our world is a wonder; what are the odds that this particular planet developed all the necessary components, parts that all work in unison, to support life? How do they interact? How did they come to be? I thought back to how my previously simplistic mind-set evolved this past year.

The very existence of our world is a wonder; what are the odds that this particular planet developed all the necessary components, parts that all work in unison, to support life?

At Balboa, juniors and seniors join one of five small learning communities, which are integrated into the curriculum. Near the end of sophomore year, I ranked my choices: Law Academy first—it seemed the most prestigious—and WALC, the Wilderness Arts and Literacy Collaborative, fourth. So when I was sorted into WALC, I felt disappointed at the inflexibility of my schedule and bitter toward my classes. However, since students are required to wait at least a semester before switching pathways, I stayed in WALC. My experiences that semester began shifting my ambition-oriented paradigm to an interest-oriented one. I didn’t switch out.

Beyond its integrated classes, WALC takes its students on trips to natural areas not only to build community among its students, but also to explore complex natural processes and humanity’s role in them. Piecing these lessons together, I create an image of our universe. I can visualize the carving of glacial valleys, the creation and gradation of mountains by uplift and weathering, and the transportation of nutrients to and from ecosystems by rivers and salmon. I see these forces on the surface of a tiny planet rotating on its axis and orbiting the sun, a gem in this vast universe. Through WALC, I have gained an intimate understanding of natural systems and an addiction to understanding the deep interconnections embedded in our cosmos.

Understanding a system’s complex mechanics not only satisfies my curiosity, but also adds beauty to my world; my understanding of tectonic and gradational forces allows me to appreciate mountains and coastlines beyond aesthetics. By physically going to the place described in WALC’s lessons, I have not only gained the tools to admire these systems, but have also learned to actually appreciate them. This creates a thirst to see more beauty in a world that’s filled with poverty and violence, and a hunger for knowledge to satisfy that thirst. There are so many different systems to examine and dissect—science alone has universal, planetary, molecular, atomic, and subatomic scales to investigate. I hope to be able to find my interests by taking a variety of courses in college, and further humanity’s understanding through research, so that all can derive a deeper appreciation for the complex systems that govern this universe.

Tony’s essay opens with stargazing at the ocean’s edge where we experience his boundless curiosity towards the natural world, sentience, and life itself. This wide-eyed wonderment is rendered artfully, yet what actually enables this essay to succeed is its ability to ponder deep concepts without getting lost in the clouds.

The story itself revolves around an event that seems far removed from the incomprehensibility of the universe: a randomized selection has assigned Tony to study wilderness arts when he preferred the path of law. He is bitter that a decision impacting his studies has been determined by chance. We see vulnerability in his admission that he was beholden to an “ambition oriented paradigm,” rather than studying what interested him most. However, what we discover through the rest of the essay is that Tony’s decision to remain in wilderness arts is one that has transformed him completely, changing his perspective from a “simplistic mindset” to one that is addicted to “understanding the deep interconnections embedded in our cosmos.”

The strength of Tony's language helps us appreciate the breadth and excitement of his unforseen awakening.

The strength of Tony’s language helps us appreciate the breadth and excitement of his unforseen awakening. From visualizing the “carving of glacial valleys” to reveling in the complex mechanics of natural systems, the essay showcases how much more Tony appreciates our world thanks to an event that had once seemed unfairly arbitrary. Observing Tony’s thirst for life’s interconnectedness, we grow confident that his evolving perspective will guide his studies into exciting unexpected realms.

Sean's Essay

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I have always envied the butterfly.

Its graceful poise as it glides through the air; the blissful flutter of its wings as it courageously embarks upon life’s journeys. Its ambitious and adaptive nature — a change-maker and discoverer, a trendsetter in the animal world, a leader amongst other species. Charles Darwin said, “it is not the strongest of species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change.” I envy the butterfly’s adaptive approach to change, making them the silent leaders of the animal kingdom.

It was at age nine, on a family trip to the Boston Museum of Science, that I was first drawn to the breathtaking butterfly. As I stepped into the butterfly’s endless capsule of nature, the flamboyant and audacious nature of the butterfly was captivating — their vibrant colors flaunted proud and shame-free, central to their persona but not defining of their personality. Their extraordinary courage in self-expression brought a little boy great inspiration. As someone who has questioned and struggled with my identity and accepting my queerness throughout life, the butterfly exemplified what it meant to be bold, courageous, and proud to a young boy who was lacking in all of those.

The butterfly exemplified what it meant to be bold, courageous, and proud to a young boy who was lacking in all of those.

I vividly recall one butterfly standing out among its comrades. Being an uncreative third-grader, I named my new friend Bloo due to his radiant cerulean shades descending from darkness to light as they progressed from the wing’s base. I watched Bloo soar, using his wings to glide far above the dainty and fragile stereotypes placed on him by society. I admire the profound growth Bloo must have achieved to get here, at one point a timid and powerless inchworm evolved into a carefully-crafted canvas of power. Bloo exemplified the strength and pride that I needed to begin accepting my identity. Looking back on this brief encounter with Bloo, I recall how he taught an insecure child self-acceptance. From here, I began to internalize the butterfly’s power. I began to molt into a new skin with fledgling wings.

As I progressed through life with these newly-discovered wings, I became increasingly drawn to observing butterflies in nature. They have proven much more than just precious gems found amongst clouds or prize trophies for kindergarteners to catch in their nets. The butterfly has shown itself as the hidden alpha of the animal kingdom — a leader and trendsetter amongst organisms both small and large, a fearless change-maker enabling them to outsurvive the rest for the past fifty-six million years.

With the wings and strength of the butterfly latched to my shoulders, I proudly embraced the challenge posed by this delicate yet powerful creature — to be a leader and a change-maker. Recognizing many social injustices in my community, I was inspired by the butterfly to become a voice of change. Driven by the butterfly’s creativity, I developed a social justice discussion program to take place at my high school, and became a local leader and fighter against corrupt politics in the 2020 election cycle. Bloo reminds me that time moves quickly and I must never settle nor lose focus in the crusade for justice. I hope to use this fragile time to advocate for equality in medicine, combining my passion for science with advocacy to leave a lasting legacy.

Today, the lessons taught by the butterfly are never far from my mind, whether I'm sitting in my English classroom discussing Beowulf, dreading the prospect of my upcoming integral exam, or even studying Darwin in Biology.

All these years later, as I ponder my defining characteristics and core values, I recognize that it is my time to become the butterfly — to embody Darwin’s words and face life with the courage to create change as I break free from my cocoon and enter the long-awaited adult world.

Professional Review by HS2 Academy

This piece is quite touching, as it deftly crafts a delicate and nuanced picture of Sean’s lifelong connection with the butterfly. It is playful (“my new friend Bloo”) while also profoundly introspective. It starts out effectively with a thought-provoking hook. After all, how many people would think to envy a butterfly? But the essay quickly picks up pace and shows how the butterfly truly is a perfect symbol for Sean’s own metamorphosis into a true leader and agent of change.

The essay works on so many levels because it utilizes an extended metaphor that aptly describes many parallels with Sean's life.

The essay works on so many levels because it utilizes an extended metaphor that aptly describes many parallels with Sean’s life. Oftentimes, many college essays utilize figurative language, but the connection with the narrative of that student’s life tends to be rather superficial. The idea of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon may seem a bit cliche as an image of a student’s transformation, but Sean’s essay goes deeper, in part because of a parallel with Sean’s own struggles with their queer identity. Phrases like using his wings to “glide far above the dainty and fragile stereotypes placed on him by society” powerfully capture Sean’s own journey from an insecure child to an advocate for social justice and equality in medicine.

We learn that Sean has truly found inspiration in the butterfly, rising above struggles with self-identity to become a principled leader with a genuine desire to fight injustice. The qualities Sean demonstrates—determination over adversity, passion for equality and justice—would be a welcome addition to any college community.

Sample details

Volunteering

• Words: 1542

Related Topics

• Overcoming Challenges
• Never Give Up
• Helping Others
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Volunteering: a Whole New World

Not everyone has the opportunity to take part in mission trips or volunteer trips in their high school. Luckily my school offered an amazing trip to Nicaragua, a third world country in Central America, to help those in need through many different activities. Although this trip was not easy, required a lot of work and was even emotionally taxing, the life lessons that I have learned made it well worth it. According to Dr. Jessie Voigts, “volunteering will change your life. How can it not? You’re exploring a new place, culture, people — and working with them to affect change.” I agree with this statement based on the fact that not only are you doing good for a community that needs help, but you are educating yourself on a completely different culture that will expand your knowledge and cultural awareness. I strongly believe that high schools should offer more opportunities for volunteer programs abroad in order for a student to be exposed to hands on work experience, educational and cultural awareness, and connection building.

Volunteering is a way to dive deep into hands on education. Making a change in the world can start off with something as little as building one family a cement house so they don’t have to live in a house built of tarp. Many volunteers overlook the construction aspect of volunteering because they think they need experience in building or they might not be strong enough to handle the difficult parts of construction volunteering. This is not always the case. When I travelled to Nicaragua, My group was assigned to build a house for a family who had just gave birth to a baby boy. They were living in a house made of plastic bags and tarps, with beds made of wood and no mattress. I did not have any experience with construction, and neither did anyone else in my group. Construction workers from the city we were volunteering in helped all of us, teaching us how to mix cement and eventually mold it into a small home. This was not easy, especially in the heat, but we all did our share of work and it really made a difference.

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You don’t need experience in the construction and building business to help these people, you just need to have an open mind and willingness to work your hardest. Not only did I get a chance to help people in need live more comfortably, but now I know how to mix cement, which is something I would have never learned if I didn’t go on this mission trip. There are many work sites that need more volunteers to help get more things done for these communities. If more students were offered the opportunities to do this, the more change there would be all around the world. Before my school informed me of volunteer abroad, I probably would have never looked into it simply because I didn’t think I was capable. No matter who you are or how much experience you have, you can always help in some way. The feeling you get when you finish a product you worked so hard on, and see the impact you made on a community, is indescribable. Hands on volunteering experience is something that can become useful as you go through life. It is a tool that can assist you day to day.

Not only does volunteering abroad help the people of the community you are visiting, but it can help you as the volunteer. One way volunteering can help you is academically. Volunteering in a foreign country can improve language development. I took Spanish at my high school, and when I went to Nicaragua my Spanish improved tremendously. Even just being there for a week, having to communicate with the people of Leon, Nicaragua helped me once I got back into the classroom and made me more interested in the class.

For many of my friends, Nicaragua impacted their career choices and studies in college. It helped them discover what they want to do in life and opened their eyes to learning things they never thought they would be interested in. My friend Betsy, who came on the Nicaragua mission trip, decided to double major in communications and Spanish because of the experiences she had communicating with the people of Leon. “Traveling to Nicaragua and communicating with the kids in Spanish, emphasized my true passion for the language and made me realize that I want to pursue a career in Spanish.” Not only did it help me in the classroom but it also helped me gain knowledge through real life experiences. Being away from home and in this place where children don’t even have beds to sleep on really made me think. It made me question things like why and how this country got to this point? What is the history behind it? It helped me to think outside of the classroom about things that I am really interested in, which improved my critical thinking. Critical thinking is a very important aspect in life and it is something many young people aren’t exposed to, especially in high school. As Bell Hook said in his “Critical Thinking” piece, “Critical thinking involves first discovering the who, what, when, where, and how of things-finding the answers to those eternal questions of the inquisitive child-and then utilizing that knowledge in a manner that enables you to determine what matters most.”(9) I agree with Hook that critical thinking is something that helps you discover what is truly important in life. Learning about the Nicaraguan culture and history really has helped me find myself and be more appreciative for what I have today. When you see little girls who cant stop taking pictures on your phone because they have never seen a reflection of themselves, it makes you thankful for things you didn’t even think was a privilege. After my mission trip, I try not to take things for granted, and when I’m having a bad day I think of what people in third world countries are going through. What moved me to look at life in a different and more joyful way was that even though the families had close to nothing, barely enough food, barely enough clothes, and no beds to sleep on, they always have a smile on their face and are thankful for the little things they do have. I was inspired and it changed my whole point of view in life, which is very important for a high schooler because we are often confused and uneducated on what life really is like outside of our comfort zone.

Building relationships with people around you is a skill that will help someone in all aspects of life. When volunteering abroad, you form special connections with teachers, fellow students, and the people of the community you helped. I was able to build very close relationships with my advisors and teachers on this trip. Because of this relationship that we built, teachers saw us as equal. We were learning from each other, helping each other, and no one person was above the other. Instead of the teacher acting as if they have all the knowledge and we have to listen and memorize, they communicated with us. I frequently found myself partaking in discussions with my teachers in which we were both learning something from each others insight. As Paulo Freire says “The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.”(7) The process in which both the student and teacher grow is truly remarkable. What struck this relationship between the teacher and student is working together. Once we were working together on a job site, It struck the opportunity for communication and education based on life experience. Working together to communicate with the Nicaraguan people who did not speak english, brought us together as a team. Freire also states, “Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning.” Freire is right, communicating is a key factor in life today. Learning how to communicate with people and building relationships is a life skill you will need throughout life. It is a skill you will use when going on interviews for jobs, beginning a new life at a university, and in the work place when you have to cooperate with others.

The life skills that I gained from my experience volunteering in Nicaragua, are skills that I probably wouldn’t have today if I had not went. More high schools across the country should make their students more aware of the benefits this program can offer. Christine Williams supports my thesis with an article about volunteering abroad. In the article she states, “It’ll open your eyes to global inequalities, give you a greater appreciation for everything you have, and help you contribute to making the world a better place.” Students wont have the opportunity to contribute to all of these things if they are not educated of the importance of volunteering, and I don’t think students should miss out on the opportunity.

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Guest Essay

When I Became a Birder, Almost Everything Else Fell Into Place

Mr. Yong is a science writer whose most recent book, “An Immense World,” investigates animal perception.

Last September, I drove to a protected wetland near my home in Oakland, Calif., walked to the end of a pier and started looking at birds. Throughout the summer, I was breaking in my first pair of binoculars, a Sibley field guide and the Merlin song-identification app, but always while hiking or walking the dog. On that pier, for the first time, I had gone somewhere solely to watch birds.

In some birding circles, people say that anyone who looks at birds is a birder — a kind, inclusive sentiment that overlooks the forces that create and shape subcultures. Anyone can dance, but not everyone would identify as a dancer, because the term suggests, if not skill, then at least effort and intent. Similarly, I’ve cared about birds and other animals for my entire life, and I’ve written about them throughout my two decades as a science writer, but I mark the moment when I specifically chose to devote time and energy to them as the moment I became a birder.

Since then, my birder derangement syndrome has progressed at an alarming pace. Seven months ago, I was still seeing very common birds for the first time. Since then, I’ve seen 452 species, including 337 in the United States, and 307 this year alone. I can reliably identify a few dozen species by ear. I can tell apart greater and lesser yellowlegs, house and purple finches, Cooper’s and sharp-shinned hawks. (Don’t talk to me about gulls; I’m working on the gulls.) I keep abreast of eBird’s rare bird alerts and have spent many days — some glorious, others frustrating — looking for said rare birds. I know what it means to dip, to twitch, to pish . I’ve gone owling.

I didn’t start from scratch. A career spent writing about nature gave me enough avian biology and taxonomy to roughly know the habitats and silhouettes of the major groups. Journalism taught me how to familiarize myself with unfamiliar territory very quickly. I crowdsourced tips on the social media platform Bluesky . I went out with experienced birders to learn how they move through a landscape and what cues they attend to.

I studied up on birds that are famously difficult to identify so that when I first saw them in the field, I had an inkling of what they were without having to check a field guide. I used the many tools now available to novices: EBird shows where other birders go and reveals how different species navigate space and time; Merlin is best known as an identification app but is secretly an incredible encyclopedia; Birding Quiz lets you practice identifying species based on fleeting glances at bad angles.

This all sounds rather extra, and birding is often defined by its excesses. At its worst, it becomes an empty process of collection that turns living things into abstract numbers on meaningless lists. But even that style of birding is harder without knowledge. To find the birds, you have to know them. And in the process of knowing them, much else falls into place.

Birding has tripled the time I spend outdoors. It has pushed me to explore Oakland in ways I never would have: Amazing hot spots lurk within industrial areas, sewage treatment plants and random residential parks. It has proved more meditative than meditation. While birding, I seem impervious to heat, cold, hunger and thirst. My senses focus resolutely on the present, and the usual hubbub in my head becomes quiet. When I spot a species for the first time — a lifer — I course with adrenaline while being utterly serene.

I also feel a much deeper connection to the natural world, which I have long written about but always remained slightly distant from. I knew that the loggerhead shrike — a small but ferocious songbird — impales the bodies of its prey on spikes. I’ve now seen one doing that with my own eyes. I know where to find the shrikes and what they sound like. Countless fragments of unrooted trivia that rattled around my brain are now grounded in place, time and experience.

When I step out my door in the morning, I take an aural census of the neighborhood, tuning in to the chatter of creatures that were always there and that I might have previously overlooked. The passing of the seasons feels more granular, marked by the arrival and disappearance of particular species instead of much slower changes in day length, temperature and greenery. I find myself noticing small shifts in the weather and small differences in habitat. I think about the tides.

So much more of the natural world feels close and accessible now. When I started birding, I remember thinking that I’d never see most of the species in my field guide. Sure, backyard birds like robins and western bluebirds would be easy, but not black skimmers or peregrine falcons or loggerhead shrikes. I had internalized the idea of nature as distant and remote — the province of nature documentaries and far-flung vacations. But in the past six months, I’ve seen soaring golden eagles, heard duetting great horned owls, watched dancing sandhill cranes and marveled at diving Pacific loons, all within an hour of my house. “I’ll never see that” has turned into “Where can I find that?”

Of course, having the time to bird is an immense privilege. As a freelancer, I have total control over my hours and my ability to get out in the field. “Are you a retiree?” a fellow birder recently asked me. “You’re birding like a retiree.” I laughed, but the comment spoke to the idea that things like birding are what you do when you’re not working, not being productive.

I reject that. These recent years have taught me that I’m less when I’m not actively looking after myself, that I have value to my world and my community beyond ceaseless production and that pursuits like birding that foster joy, wonder and connection to place are not sidebars to a fulfilled life but their essence.

It’s easy to think of birding as an escape from reality. Instead, I see it as immersion in the true reality. I don’t need to know who the main characters are on social media and what everyone is saying about them, when I can instead spend an hour trying to find a rare sparrow. It’s very clear to me which of those two activities is the more ridiculous. It’s not the one with the sparrow.

More of those sparrows are imminent. I’m about to witness my first spring migration as warblers and other delights pass through the Bay Area. Birds I’ve seen only in drab grays are about to don their spectacular breeding plumages. Familiar species are about to burst out in new tunes that I’ll have to learn. I have my first lazuli bunting to see, my first blue grosbeak to find, my first least terns to photograph. I can’t wait.

Ed Yong is a science writer whose most recent book, “An Immense World,” investigates animal perception.

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The physical sensations of watching a total solar eclipse

Regina G. Barber

Science writer David Baron witnesses his first total solar eclipse in Aruba, 1998. He says seeing one is "like you've left the solar system and are looking back from some other world." Paul Myers hide caption

Science writer David Baron witnesses his first total solar eclipse in Aruba, 1998. He says seeing one is "like you've left the solar system and are looking back from some other world."

David Baron can pinpoint the first time he got addicted to chasing total solar eclipses, when the moon completely covers up the sun. It was 1998 and he was on the Caribbean island of Aruba. "It changed my life. It was the most spectacular thing I'd ever seen," he says.

Baron, author of the 2017 book American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World , wants others to witness its majesty too. On April 8, millions of people across North America will get that chance — a total solar eclipse will appear in the sky. Baron promises it will be a surreal, otherworldly experience. "It's like you've left the solar system and are looking back from some other world."

Baron, who is a former NPR science reporter, talks to Life Kit about what to expect when viewing a total solar eclipse, including the sensations you may feel and the strange lighting effects in the sky. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Baron views the beginning of a solar eclipse with friends in Western Australia in 2023. Baron says getting to see the solar corona during a total eclipse is "the most dazzling sight in the heavens." Photographs by David Baron; Bronson Arcuri, Kara Frame, CJ Riculan/NPR; Collage by Becky Harlan/NPR hide caption

Baron views the beginning of a solar eclipse with friends in Western Australia in 2023. Baron says getting to see the solar corona during a total eclipse is "the most dazzling sight in the heavens."

What does it feel like to experience a total solar eclipse — those few precious minutes when the moon completely covers up the sun?

It is beautiful and absolutely magnificent. It comes on all of a sudden. As soon as the moon blocks the last rays of the sun, you're plunged into this weird twilight in the middle of the day. You look up and the blue sky has been torn away. On any given day, the blue sky overhead acts as a screen that keeps us from seeing what's in space. And suddenly that's gone. So you can look into the middle of the solar system and see the sun and the planets together.

Can you tell me about the sounds and the emotions you're feeling?

A total solar eclipse is so much more than something you just see with your eyes. It's something you experience with your whole body. [With the drop in sunlight], birds will be going crazy. Crickets may be chirping. If you're around other people, they're going to be screaming and crying [with all their emotions from seeing the eclipse]. The air temperature drops because the sunlight suddenly turns off. And you're immersed in the moon's shadow. It doesn't feel real.

Everything you need to know about solar eclipse glasses before April 8

In your 2017 Ted Talk , you said you felt like your eyesight was failing in the moments before totality. Can you go into that a little more?

The lighting effects are very weird. Before you get to the total eclipse, you have a progressive partial eclipse as the moon slowly covers the sun. So over the course of an hour [or so], the sunlight will be very slowly dimming. It's as if you're in a room in a house and someone is very slowly turning down the dimmer switch. For most of that time your eyes are adjusting and you don't notice it. But then there's a point at which the light's getting so dim that your eyes can't adjust, and weird things happen. Your eyes are less able to see color. It's as if the landscape is losing its color. Also there's an effect where the shadows get very strange.

Crescent-shaped shadows cast by the solar eclipse before it reaches totality appear on a board at an eclipse-viewing event in Antelope, Ore., 2017. Kara Frame and CJ Riculan/NPR hide caption

You see these crescents on the ground.

There are two things that happen. One is if you look under a tree, the spaces between leaves or branches will act as pinhole projectors. So you'll see tiny little crescents everywhere. But there's another effect. As the sun goes from this big orb in the sky to something much smaller, shadows grow sharper. As you're nearing the total eclipse, if you have the sun behind you and you look at your shadow on the ground, you might see individual hairs on your head. It's just very odd.

Some people might say that seeing the partial eclipse is just as good. They don't need to go to the path of totality.

A partial solar eclipse is a very interesting experience. If you're in an area where you see a deep partial eclipse, the sun will become a crescent like the moon. You can only look at it with eye protection. Don't look at it with the naked eye . The light can get eerie. It's fun, but it is not a thousandth as good as a total eclipse.

A total eclipse is a fundamentally different experience, because it's only when the moon completely blocks the sun that you can actually take off the eclipse glasses and look with the naked eye at the sun.

And you will see a sun you've never seen before. That bright surface is gone. What you're actually looking at is the sun's outer atmosphere, the solar corona. It's the most dazzling sight in the heavens. It's this beautiful textured thing. It looks sort of like a wreath or a crown made out of tinsel or strands of silk. It shimmers in space. The shape is constantly changing. And you will only see that if you're in the path of the total eclipse.

Shots - Health News

Watching a solar eclipse without the right filters can cause eye damage. here's why.

So looking at a partial eclipse is not the same?

It is not at all the same. Drive those few miles. Get into the path of totality.

This is really your chance to see a total eclipse. The next one isn't happening across the U.S. for another 20 years.

The next significant total solar eclipse in the United States won't be until 2045. That one will go from California to Florida and will cross my home state of Colorado. I've got it on my calendar.

The digital story was written by Malaka Gharib and edited by Sylvie Douglis and Meghan Keane. The visual editor is Beck Harlan. We'd love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at [email protected].

Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts and Spotify , and sign up for our newsletter .

NPR will be sharing highlights here from across the NPR Network throughout the day Monday if you're unable to get out and see it in real time.

Correction April 3, 2024

In a previous audio version of this story, we made reference to an upcoming 2025 total solar eclipse. The solar eclipse in question will take place in 2045.

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Learning a new language at my age was a thug, people make fun of you in school if you don’t understand or don’t know how to say something. Only a few people help you. When I lived in Mexico I was always one of the best students and most of the times I was on the honor roll. Without knowing English in this country, I couldn’t the same. I start school here in Houston the 9th grade and my grades were very low, I couldn’t believe that my grades went from 100 to less than 50. Also, I couldn’t do my work, homework and tests because I didn’t understand or I didn't know how to ask. All this situation made me feel so incapable and frustrated. I started to use that frustration and courage to lose my fear and sorrow to ask my teachers and classmates for help. I decided to talk more English than Spanish with people in the stores, malls, and school. During the weekend with my cousins I remember that I used to talk to them in Spanish and they talked to me English so I could learn more vocabulary and how to pronounce the words. Listen to music in English helped me a lot familiarizing my ear to the language too, and using my free time to translate words from Spanish to English to learn more, so I could do better in

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When I first moved to the United States of America seven years ago at the age of fourteen, life was challenging. I did not speak English and had to immediately start my first year, as a freshman, in high school. I always enjoyed challenges, which was one of the reasons I moved to the US, and decided to opt out of elementary English classes and jumped right into regular classes along with my English First Language Speaker classmates. Not only I had to learn Basic English to be able to communicate with people, I had to make sure I understood academic language used in classes such as Chemistry, Physics, History, Biology and etc. to pass them. I spent many hours studying English and doing my homework after school. Then, when I started to feel

Overcoming Obstacles To Achieve The American Dream

I put in practice some words that I learned in school. I started having short conversations in English with different people because I had expanded my vocabulary. I would always carry a computer with me because it was helpful . The computer help translate the words I didn’t know. I also stopped being self-conscious because I had to try to speak in English if I wanted to learn more . I mispronounced some words , but I learned from that because someone else would say it correctly . I felt very proud because I was overcoming my obstacle. Additionally, I felt like I was fitting in , and my grades continued to go up. I also was eligible to play in the soccer team. As a result,I can say that the language barrier was an obstacle that made me a stronger person because I overcame the obstacle that life put in my path. Moreover , I never gave up, and I think that’s what life's about. In effect, my GPA is 3.5 now when it used to be 2.0 or lower. These 3 years of high school have been challenging , but I have been putting effort. I am getting more fluent with the language. I am prepared for the next challenge, which is

A Brave New World-Personal Narrative

The object given to me was the heart of a boy who I was fond of for quite some time. We spent the summer nights frolicking through green pastures of open land ready to take on the world like an explorer ready to find a new adventure; now what I look back on to be no more than a barren field filled with patches of weeds poking their heads above ground, hoping to catch even the smallest array of sunlight. I spent most of my summer nights with this boy, let us call him James.

Personal Narrative: My Life In The United States

When it was time to start school, my parents tried to convince me to repeat third grade here. However, I refused and started school in fourth grade. Looking back, I realize how this experience taught me to take important risks later in my life. Fourth grade, however, was sort of a struggle due to the language barrier. Although I was exposed to English in classes while I was in Ethiopia, I had trouble reading, writing, and communicating. To work harder, I needed a source of motivation: the sight of my classmates outperforming me.

Only this would happen to me I think to myself as I stumble around this dreadful forest. Today I decided to take a nice peaceful walk in the forest listening to the birds chirping a melody and the sun beaming down on me but my klutz of a self just had to get lost. I have been walking around aimlessly for hours now and the sun has gone down so it has gotten quite chilly and dark out. My phone happens to have no service out here, I can not even call my family to let them know where I am, they must be worried sick. To calm myself down I take a deep refreshing breath the air around me, smelling distinctly of pine and mildew

Reflective Writing - My Development as a Writer Essay

the day and English at night, but my transition was harder due to my poor foundations of the English language. I now had to speak, write, and read in English, when I preferred my native language, Spanish. Immaculate Heart Elementary School provided a tutor to help me read from the textbooks in my third grade class. I had difficulty communicating with the teacher and classmates. I felt embarrassed for not understanding English, and sad knowing that it was hard to speak with my Spanish accent. Even though I was placed in such an unfamiliar and difficult situation, I enjoyed the educational atmosphere. I felt safer in an environment where I had some individual attention. I began to write essays about various social studies related topics such as the 41st President of the United States and the Statue of Liberty. I recall spending a lot of my time thinking about the ideas I should mention in those essays, but I spent even more time trying to get those thoughts on lined paper. I wondered whether I was saying things the correct way. I felt behind compared to the other student in my class. I didn?t know the basics of grammar, like when to use ?is? and not ?are?, when everyone else had mastered that area of study. I struggled thinking in Spanish and

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• High school
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Caitlin Clark and Iowa find peace in the process

An Iowa associate professor breaks down the numbers to display Caitlin Clark's incredible impact on women's college basketball. (2:08)

ON A COLD, snowy Monday night in January, Caitlin Clark walked into a dimly lit restaurant in Iowa City and looked around the room for her parents. They smiled from a back table and waved her over. It was her 22nd birthday. Three teammates and the head Iowa Hawkeyes manager were with her, and soon everyone settled in and stories started to fly -- senior year energy, still in college and nostalgic for it, too.

That meant, of course, tales of The Great Croatian Booze Cruise.

In summer 2023, as a reward for their Final Four season, the Iowa coaches arranged a boondoggle of an international preseason run through Italy and Croatia, grown-ass women, pockets thick with NIL money to burn. They saw places they'd never seen, spoke strange languages and walked narrow cobblestone streets. "One of the best nights was when we got bottles of wine and just sat on the rooftop of the hotel," Caitlin said.

On the last free day of the trip, they proposed a vitally important mission to head manager Will McIntire, who now sat at the birthday table next to me.

They needed a yacht.

Like a real one, the kind of boat where Pat Riley and Jay-Z might be drinking mojitos on a summer Sunday. So McIntire found himself with the hotel concierge looking at photographs of boats. He asked Caitlin about the price of one that looked perfect.

"Book it right now," she said.

They climbed aboard to find a stocked bar and an eager crew. The captain motored them out to nearby caves off the coast of Dubrovnik where the players could snorkel and float on their backs and stare up at the towering sky. They held their breath and swam into caves. They looked out for one another underwater. When stories of the Caitlin Clark Hawkeyes are told years from now, fans will remember logo 3s, blowout wins and the worldwide circus of attention, but players on the team will remember a glorious preseason yacht day on crystal blue waters, a time when they were young, strong and queens of all they beheld. They'll talk about the color and clarity of the sea. A color that doesn't exist in Iowa. Or didn't until Caitlin Clark came along.

The Booze Cruise lived up to its name. After the stress of a Final Four run and the sudden rise of Caitlin's star, it was a chance to be a team and have nobody care and to care about nobody else. Many of their coaches didn't even find out about the yacht until the team got home.

"It was just what we needed," McIntire said at the birthday dinner table. It was the kind of night parents dream of having with their grown children. Often three conversations were going at once. Caitlin's dad, Brent, was telling McIntire about the wild screams and curses that come from their basement when one of their two sons is playing Fortnite.

"You should hear her play Fortnite," McIntire said, pointing to Caitlin.

"Is she good?" Brent asked.

"No," he laughed.

Caitlin told a story about her freshman year roommate almost burning the dorm down trying to make mac and cheese without water. She and Kate Martin told one about both of them oversleeping the bus at an away game -- they awoke to both their phones ringing and someone knocking on the door as they made eye contact and shouted "S---!" in unison.

There was one about Caitlin in full conspiracy-theory rage, too, convinced that Ohio State had falsified her COVID-19 test result to keep her out of a game.

"This is rigged!" she told her mom on the phone. "They're trying to hold me out!"

Anne took over the narration.

"Call the AD!" she said, imitating her daughter.

"I did not say that!" Caitlin said.

There was the time Caitlin needed to pass a COVID-19 test for games in Mexico. She showed up in the practice gym, throwing her mask on the ground while waving her phone and crowing, "I'm negative, bitches!" ... until one of her teammates looked at the email and realized Caitlin had read it wrong, so she quickly grabbed her mask and bolted. As the stories flew, Caitlin smiled, loving to hear her teammates, happy to be with them.

We raised glasses again and again, and her dad beamed. Her mom kept thanking her teammates for taking such good care of her. They toasted to Caitlin, to CC, to 22 and to Deuce-Deuce. The waitress brought over a framed collage she had made, along with a note thanking Caitlin for inspiring "girl power."

Caitlin's mom made a final toast.

"Happy birthday," she said.

"Happy birthday, Caitlin," Kate Martin said, turning to her left and asking her, "What was the best thing that happened in Year 21?"

Caitlin thought about it for a second.

"Final Four," she said.

Everyone clinked their glasses.

"Not even the booze cruise?" one of them asked.

They all laughed.

"Booze cruise!" everyone shouted.

MY INTRODUCTION TO Caitlin Clark's world began in September over breakfast with Hawkeyes associate head coach Jan Jensen, who grew up on an Iowa farm before building a basketball legend of her own.

We met at an old-guard Jewish deli while Jensen was on a brief Los Angeles recruiting trip, flying in from Alaska that morning and flying back home that night. We ogled the cake case with the towering meringue pompadours but settled on something healthy, along with about a million refills of coffee. Jensen held a cup in her hands and summed up the challenge now of being Caitlin Clark.

"She's figuring out how to really live with getting what she's always wanted," she said.

Jensen smiled before she continued.

"She wants to be the greatest that ever was."

She pointed at me as if to underline her meaning.

"I believe that in my heart," she said.

Jensen averaged 66 points a game in high school in the days when girls played 6-on-6. She is in Iowa's girls high school basketball Hall of Fame. Her grandmother, Dorcas Andersen Randolph, who went by "Lottie" because she scored a lot of points, is too. Jensen still has her uniform. She sees Caitlin standing on the shoulders of generations of women like Lottie.

She also understands Caitlin is standing on no one's shoulders.

"She's uncensored," Jensen said. "So many times women have to be censored."

Jensen leaned across the table again.

"There is something in her," she said. "Unapologetic."

To Jensen, Caitlin seems immortal; young, talented, dedicated, rich, famous and on the rise.

"She's 21," she said.

A magic age, her confidence and talent startling to older people like me and Jensen.

"Don't ever let anyone steal that from her," Jensen said. "Protecting that is the coach's job."

Jensen spoke with pride of Caitlin's 15 national awards, but she also said she is so talented, and driven, that she sometimes struggles to trust her teammates. This would be the work of this season and the epic battle of Caitlin's athletic life. She sees things other people do not see, including her teammates. She imagines what other people even in her close orbit cannot imagine, has achieved what none of them have achieved and has done so because she listens to the singular voice in her head and her heart. She must protect that and nurture it. At the same time, she is learning that her power grows exponentially when it lives in concert with other people. A great team multiplies her. A bad team diminishes her. The trust her coaches ask her to have in her teammates, especially new ones, comes with great personal risk. Believing in her coaches requires faith and courage. For their part, the Iowa coaches know that they are holding a rare diamond and are constantly reminding themselves their job is to polish, not to ask her to cut to their precise specifications. It's an effort, possession by possession, game by game, practice by practice, to meld two truths, to find the right balance, to elevate.

"It's a work in progress," Jensen said.

After last season's run to the NCAA title game, the Hawkeyes lost their star center, Monika Czinano, who's now playing pro ball in Hungary. She started every game Caitlin had ever played except one, and her dominance in the post taught Caitlin how successful teammates created space and opportunities at other spots on the floor. She still talks to Monika. Her trust in Monika's replacements is the Hawkeyes' most fragile place this year and will say a lot about whether this team can return to the Final Four.

"That's gonna be the struggle for her," Jensen said.

This idea would, in the coming five months, create two narratives for me, one public, one private, one about a superstar standing on center stage surrounded by an ever-growing mania, and another about a young woman trying to find herself, trying to decide how and who she wanted to be , in the center of that madness.

The waitress warmed up our coffee.

Jensen said she'd introduce me to Caitlin as soon as there was time in her schedule. Then she slipped out of our booth and headed out for a scouting visit at a nearby high school. I had a meeting with Priscilla Presley for another project later that day across town. We talked about life in the fishbowl with Elvis. She told me about how only a handful of memories remained hers alone even all these years later. I thought about Caitlin somewhere 30,000 feet in the air on a plane home from New York City after she received her final award of the 2023 season.

THIS IS A STORY about being 21. Do you remember turning 21?

At 18 you feel immortal but just three years later, a crack has opened in that immortality. You feel the gap between ambitions held and realized. You're aware that wanting things badly enough won't always be enough. You guard against bad energy and thoughts and hold fast to every ounce of confidence. That's when life really begins.

The size of Caitlin Clark's stage and the scale of her dreams and the reach of her talent leave little margin for error. She is chasing being the best of all time, which is an isolating thing. She isn't scared to voice her ambitions even when they separate her from the people she loves. Her teammates dream of merely making a WNBA roster. Kate Martin did the math for me one evening. There are 12 teams. Each team has 12 roster spots. College basketball might be a bigger public stage than the professional league, but it is much easier. The normal dream of a 21-year-old women's college basketball player, then, is the nearly impossible task of finding just one of 144 spots on a WNBA team, which has nothing to do with normal. A lofty dream might be to win one national award, not 15. When Caitlin gave her Associated Press Player of the Year trophy to her parents, her mom looked inside and gasped -- some of the metal on the inside was already peeling and rusting.

"What happened?" she asked Caitlin.

Caitlin shrugged sheepishly.

"The managers got it," she said.

It turns out the trophy, her mom said with a shake of the head, holds two beers. (Actually, the managers fact-checked -- it's two hard seltzers.) Caitlin is grateful for the awards but got tired of traveling around to get them, not because she didn't appreciate the attention but because she seemed to sense that her survival and continued success would depend in part on her closing the book on last season. The past is dangerous to an ambitious 21-year-old. It was a struggle to get her on the plane to New York City to accept the AAU's prestigious Sullivan Award. She asked whether it couldn't simply be mailed to her instead. In the end, she and her family had 12 hours in the city so she wouldn't miss any class. Michael Jordan talks about this -- the speed at which things come at you, the way, when you look back, it becomes hard to remember what happened where and when. That's Caitlin Clark's world right now, and inside she feels both like a superstar and like the little girl begging her father to expand the driveway concrete so she'd have a full 3-point line to shoot from. She references her childhood a lot in public, revealing comments hiding in the plain sight of news conferences and one-on-one interviews.

"I feel like I was just that little girl playing outside with my brother," she says.

The Clarks landed in New York and went straight to their hotel. Thirty minutes later, Caitlin hit the lobby dressed for the show. She signed autographs, posed for pictures, received the Sullivan Award, took more pictures, gave a speech and took more pictures. The family had just a few hours to sleep before heading to the airport for the flight home. But it was her first trip to New York City, and Caitlin said she wanted to see Times Square and get a slice of pizza. They went out and took a photograph, everyone together, then watched as Caitlin ordered a pepperoni slice, which arrived greasy on a stack of cheap paper plates. She folded it like a veteran. In the morning, they flew home. Caitlin rode with her headphones on. She likes Luke Combs. Turned up. Hearts on fire and crazy dreams. The next day she'd be at morning practice and then take her usual seat in Professor Walsh's product and pricing class.

IN MID-OCTOBER, I got to Iowa City in time for the second practice of the year. I ran into head coach Lisa Bluder in the elevator down to the Carver-Hawkeye practice gym, and she laughed about how two fans from Indiana just showed up at the first practice and were walking onto the court taking selfies. Bluder had to stop practice and politely ask, you know, what the hell? They explained they had traveled far to see Caitlin Clark in person.

At 8 a.m., practice began, and almost immediately Caitlin was vibrating with anger at the referees, who were actually team managers with whistles. The whole team looked out of sorts -- "little sh--s," one of their assistants called them during a water break -- and Caitlin fought her temper as several of her young teammates made mistakes. The main object of her scorn was a sophomore named Addison O'Grady , No. 44, who had become a bit of a punching bag. And all the while she raged at what she thought was the terrible job being done calling fouls and traveling.

"Stop letting him ref!" she barked to Jensen about a manager on the baseline. "He's not calling anything!"

She jacked up a 3.

"I don't love that 3," Bluder told her. "You were in range, no doubt. But you were not in rhythm and were contested."

Now Caitlin started talking to herself. What is the offense right now? This is a pretty regular thing, Caitlin Clark talking to Caitlin Clark, scolding her, cursing her, complaining to her, because who else could understand?

"Call screens," she muttered.

"We must call screens," Bluder yelled. "Somebody's gonna get hurt. Somebody's gonna get rocked."

Then Caitlin touched her leg gingerly, which set off a chain reaction of anxiety and hushed attention. She took herself out of an end-of-game drill to rest it. Then, unable to resist, ended up in the drill anyway.

At the end of practice, Bluder described the long road awaiting them if they wanted a return to the Final Four. The promised land, she called it. Everyone on the team knows that Caitlin has given all of them a challenge, yes, but also a gift. An opportunity to breathe rare air. Caitlin's best requires their best, and if they give it, they might just be able to beat anyone.

"Caitlin's got a hell of a lot of pressure," Bluder told them. "I get it."

But it was more than that.

"We are her," she said.

I MET WITH CAITLIN a few minutes later. We found some chairs in the Iowa film room.

"I'm trying to learn about myself as a 21-year-old," she said. "About how I react to situations, what I want in my life, what's good for me, what's bad for me."

The back wall of the film room featured larger-than-life portraits of the Hawkeyes, with Caitlin dominating the center of the collage. She gets the absurdity. Most every person walking around on the planet is a watcher. A consumer of the lives and adventures of others. Caitlin was like that, standing in line as a little girl to meet a hero like Maya Moore. In her bathroom at home in Des Moines she kept a caricature she got at an amusement park that shows her wearing a UConn uniform. But during last year's NCAA tournament, when she averaged 31.8 points and 10.0 assists in leading Iowa to the championship game, she became one of the watched .

"... and I'm 21 years old!" she said, shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders with a grin, as if to say: Buy the ticket, take the ride.

"I don't f---ing know."

She's a household name now. Nike puts her on billboards like Tiger or Serena. She is the best women's college basketball player in the country, and one of the best college basketball players period . She has designs on best ever, a fraught thing to want. She admires Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan, apex predators, and her ambition and talent live within her in equal measure alongside her youth and inexperience. She is striving for agency and intent in the glare of a white-hot spotlight. Luke Combs commented on her social media a few hours ago. She got free tickets and backstage passes to see him over the summer and also got tickets to Taylor Swift's "The Eras Tour." She invited the biggest Swifties on the team, trying to use her new superpowers for good. The Hawkeyes are forever asking her to DM their celebrity crushes and invite them to games. She laughs and tries to explain why she can't get Drake to Iowa City. A local newspaper reporter recently asked her about LSU's Angel Reese being in a Sports Illustrated swimsuit spread, a trap question asking her to comment on the marketability of their bodies.

She earns seven figures and has deals with Bose, Nike and State Farm. The Iowa grocery store chain Hy-Vee, another corporate partner, sometimes pays for her private security at public events.

Meanwhile, her mother still does her laundry.

"I'm trying to learn about myself," Caitlin repeated.

"At the same time I have to be the best version of myself. I have to be the best version of myself for my teammates, and for the fans, and for my family ... "

She laughed again.

"Yeah," she said, pausing to find the right words, feeling the weight of the coming season.

"Yeah," she said again.

Having been to the Final Four last year doesn't make another Final Four easier. It makes it harder. Fame is a warm saccharine glow that obscures the terminal velocity of expectation. "That adds to the tension," she said. "Every failure feels that much more intense. And every success also feels that much more intense. So it's about finding balance."

She sounded like an old soul, knowing how precious these days of glory are and how they are already slipping between her fingers. But that might just be because a middle-aged man was the one doing the listening. Most likely she is experiencing time in an altogether different way, so that right now, all at once, she is living with last year's almost , with this season's grind and hope, and with the knowledge that if everything goes right there is a future in which every year will be harder than the one before, and every season the watchers will be ready to replace last year's model with some newer, shinier object.

"When I leave this place, I don't want people to forget about me," she said.

THAT SAME MONTH, Brent and Anne Clark, who could only look at each other in wonder, parked in the West 43 lot next to the football stadium, where that afternoon their little girl would be playing an exhibition outdoors at Kinnick Stadium in front of the largest audience to ever watch a women's college basketball game.

"It's wild," they kept saying over and over.

"This is all she ever wanted!" Anne said as we set up the food and drinks. "She's asked for years: 'Can we please do a tailgate?'"

Brent stopped and listened to the band practicing inside the stadium. They played "Wagon Wheel." He found a spot where the sun felt warm on his face.

"So what's up with these sandwiches?" asked Caitlin's older brother Blake.

Her younger brother Colin hooked up the portable speaker. He's a freshman at Creighton, where he has found a community of his own. He and his sister adore each other. When he was a baby, the family called her "Caitie Mommy" because she took such good care of him, and now Brent and Anne love to see him celebrate her success. The first track he played was AC/DC's "Back in Black," the Hawks' football walkout song. Anne reached for a cardboard cutout of Caitlin's beloved golden retriever, Bella, a leftover from her freshman season when COVID-19 meant no fans in the seats.

Brent threw a football with one of the young family friends. Around him other fathers did the same with their sons and daughters, many of them wearing No. 22 jerseys, girls and boys.

"Look at all these little girls going in," Anne said.

Some football players walked through the parking lot, and nobody paid them much mind. Former Iowa and NFL star Marv Cook stood talking with Brent about Caitlin and her teammates when the football guys went past.

"They're not the only show in town anymore," Cook said.

The Clark car was packed with Hy-Vee fried chicken sandwiches, cookies, a cooler of beer and soda, these strange pickle-ham-cream cheese concoctions, the most Midwestern thing you've ever seen in your whole life -- "soooo gross!" Caitlin said later.

The lieutenant governor of Iowa stopped by to pay his respects.

"Hawk Walk!" he said.

Everyone went to form a line of cheering fans as the Iowa bus parked and the players went into the stadium. Anne Clark worked herself close holding up the cutout of Bella so Caitlin could see. One of the little girls next to Anne treated her like a Mama Swift sighting at a show.

"She touched me!" she screamed to her friends.

Caitlin went into the football locker room to get ready. Outside, the stadium pulsed with energy. Walter the Hawk swooped down from the press box. Then the dozens of speakers ringing the main bowl started thumping. "Back in Black" again. The whole place shook. Caitlin stepped into the light pouring into the mouth of the tunnel.

"I-O-W-A!" the crowd chanted.

"Let's hear it for No. 22, Caitlin Clark!" the announcer called.

Someone started an M-V-P chant.

The wind blew across the court. Caitlin even air-balled a free throw. Nobody cared. She got a triple-double. Stayed focused. With a minute left she threw a pass that center Addi O'Grady fumbled. Caitlin twirled around and hung her head but went back to her on the next possession.

The game ended in a blowout, and then Caitlin started working her way down the front row of the sideline, more than 50 yards of little girls and boys. They took selfies and asked her to sign their shirts. One young boy held a sign that said, "Met you at Hy-Vee."

"Thank you for coming!" Caitlin yelled.

As she finally ran into the tunnel, she jumped up and high-fived a young girl.

"No way!" the girl said.

Caitlin made it to the locker room, where she had stored a gift a very sick child had given her. The kid was a patient at the children's cancer ward across the street and was serving as an honorary captain. She'd had her own baseball card made, and on the back she'd been asked to name her favorite Hawkeye. Caitlin Clark, she said.

"I'll keep that forever," Caitlin said.

She left the stadium through a side door, got on the back of a golf cart with her boyfriend and headed to the basketball arena, where her parents waited with an enormous bag of freshly washed and folded clothes.

ONE MORNING LAST YEAR I drove across Des Moines to see where all this began. Although Caitlin hasn't been a student at Dowling Catholic for almost four years, her presence -- and her family's presence -- remains palpable in the halls. Her older brother won two state titles in football. Her younger brother won a state title in track. Caitlin's grandfather, her mom's dad, was the beloved football coach there for years. Once after an emotional game he gathered his team at midfield and burned Des Moines Register articles about his team he didn't like.

Caitlin comes by her fire honestly.

I parked and met the basketball coach, Kristin Meyer, in the lobby adjacent to the chapel. We walked through the library to her office. She told me a story that stuck with me. In 10th grade, Caitlin got a reading assignment about empathy. She didn't know what the word meant. Meyer tried and failed to explain. She realized then that she had a team of girls who wanted to enjoy playing sports -- "for fun," Caitlin would tell me later -- and one ponytailed Kobe Bryant.

The summer before her freshman season, the team went to a camp at Creighton. Caitlin threw a three-quarter-court bounce pass that hit a teammate in the hands. That same game, she bopped down the court and threw a perfect behind-the-back pass. Also in rhythm and on the money.

"I would go back and watch film and just rewind and watch again and watch again," Meyer said.

When Caitlin saw a player come open, or more often realized that a player would be coming open momentarily, look out! The ball was in the air and flying at their heads. This made her teammates nervous, and they'd shut down, which Caitlin didn't understand. Soon she just stopped passing.

"It was hard for her to understand what other people would feel," Meyer said.

Caitlin was, in real time, learning how to use her gift. This is an old story among basketball greats. Magic Johnson threw passes that even James Worthy couldn't catch. Caitlin's task was to see the gulf between her potential and her reality and close that distance. Often she got impatient. With herself and others. When someone made a mistake, or if she thought a referee or a coach was being unfair, she'd have tantrums. Mostly she seemed unaware of how her body language and mood impacted the people around her. She'd throw her arms in the air in disgust, or clap loudly, and waves of nervousness would pass through the team. Of course that cut both ways. When she praised a teammate, the coaches would see that player swell with pride. "If Caitlin gave me a compliment," one of her teammates said, "I felt like I was the best player in the gym."

Meyer started showing her film of her body language, something the Iowa coaches still do. They'd sit down and watch in silence as Caitlin stomped and gestured.

"High school basketball was honestly harder for me than college," Caitlin told me. "I mean that in the most positive, respectful way to my teammates. The basketball IQ wasn't there. At the end of the day they didn't care if we won or lost, really. It wasn't gonna affect their life that much. They just didn't get it on the same level."

Meyer watched a Bobby Knight video in which he called the bench the greatest motivator. That resonated. So when Caitlin would fire some wild shot she could see in her mind but not quite execute with her body, Meyer would sit her. Three times in high school Caitlin got technical fouls and she'd immediately come out, once for an entire quarter. As soon as she hit the chair she'd start agitating -- "Can I go back in?" "Can I go back in?!" "CAN I GO BACK IN?" -- until Meyer relented.

"When I used to get technical fouls in high school," Caitlin said, "I did not want to come out of the locker room after the game because I know my mom would be mad. But if I got one during an AAU tournament, I don't think my dad would tell my mom. He knew my mom would not be happy, but he understood it from a competitive standpoint."

Her dad played basketball and baseball in college. He sees a lot of himself in her.

"To her everything is a competition," Brent Clark said. "I was that way when I was her age. I was really ..."

He thought for a moment.

"Emotional," he said finally.

He wishes his own parents would have punished him more for his outbursts in youth sports. He remembers with shame crying in a dugout.

"I get her," he said. "I can relate. I see a lot of that fire. She's just much better at controlling it than I ever was."

Brent and Anne want most of all for Caitlin's spirit to never be squashed. Her grandfather the Dowling Catholic football coach used to say, "It's a lot easier to tame a tiger than it is to raise the dead."

Brent and I sat at a little sandwich place near his office, where he is a senior executive at an agricultural industrial parts company. He laughed talking about the Dowling Catholic Powder Puff girls' football game.

"What did she play?" I asked.

He looked at me like I was an idiot.

"Quarterback."

He laughed at the memory of taking Caitlin out in the back yard and watching her throw a perfect pass, a dart, 20 yards on the fly.

"You couldn't have thrown a better spiral."

Caitlin, like most children, watched her parents much more closely than they realized. "They balance each other really well," she said. "The biggest thing is he's always been a constant. I literally cannot say one time my dad has raised his voice at me. My mom is somebody I talk to every single day. My life would be a mess if it weren't for her. She's one of my best friends."

Caitlin led the state in scoring a couple of times, but Dowling never won a state title during her career. Her senior year the team didn't even make the state tournament. She could shoot the Maroons into games and sometimes out of them. But nobody worked harder in the gym. She wanted to be great. When someone got in the way of that, even if that someone was her, she struggled to manage her emotions. An engine as rare as hers threw out a ton of exhaust.

Caitlin and I talked about high school one morning. Both Jensen and Kate Martin told me they didn't think she had any true friends outside her tight-knit family before she got to Iowa. They didn't mean she wasn't popular, or didn't have a group to hang with, only that there was no one in her orbit who was wired like her. Legends like Tiger Woods and Joe DiMaggio often seemed alone too, even surrounded by huge crowds, solitary citizens living in a world of their own ambitions and fears.

"Were you lonely?" I asked.

She thought about it.

"I would say I was lonely in the aspect of no one understood how I was thinking," she said. "I wasn't surrounded by people who wanted to achieve the same things as me."

Letters from college coaches stacked up at her house in those days. Her parents kept them from her until late in the process, trying instinctively to protect as much of her childhood as they could. I think they knew even then. Her dream school was, like everyone else, UConn. She was growing up and learning for the first time about being watched, about reputation. A lot of college coaches watched the same body language sequences Meyer did. Most didn't mind. Dowling's open gyms filled with the best of the best coaches in the country. One absence was conspicuous, though.

"Geno never came," Meyer said.

CAITLIN'S FAMILY, IT'S important to note here, is quite Catholic. She went to Catholic school from kindergarten through graduation. Anne comes from a big, loud, fun Italian family, and if you look in Caitlin's fridge at the apartment she shares with teammate Kylie Feuerbach , you'll almost certainly find some frozen red sauce meals made by her mom or grandma.

Her brother Blake is always texting her reminders to say her rosary and go to the church near campus, conveniently located across the street from Iowa City's great dive bar, George's -- which is where Coach Bluder and her staff go to celebrate big wins. My friend Annie Gavin, whose father is the famous wrestling coach Dan Gable, goes to that church and reports that more Sundays than not, she sees Caitlin in the pews. Blake wore his St. Benedict bracelet to the Final Four last year and did four decades of his rosary at the hotel and the last round in the arena just before tipoff.

You see where this is going.

Anne Clark grew up the daughter of a Catholic high school football coach. What do you imagine she thinks is the greatest, most magical university in the world?

"For a while I thought she was gonna end up at Notre Dame," Meyer said.

Meyer told me that Caitlin remained pretty calm during her recruitment -- except when Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw came to town.

Her list of choices winnowed to two. The Hawkeyes and the Fighting Irish. She'd also looked at Iowa State, Texas and both Oregon schools. The lack of interest from UConn stung. "Honestly," she said, "it was more I wanted them to recruit me to say I got recruited. I loved UConn. I think they're the coolest place on Earth, and I wanted to say I got recruited by them. They called my AAU coach a few times, but they never talked to my family and never talked to me."

Bluder and Jensen had been worried about the Irish from the beginning. Jensen got to Brent Clark when Caitlin was in the seventh grade and told him they'd offer her a scholarship right now. Then she promised to stay away until he was ready to talk. She also predicted exactly how the rest of the nation would awake to the magic of his daughter, which gave her credibility as the years went on.

When Caitlin was playing in Bangkok with Team USA in 2019, Jensen and Bluder flew to games around the world so Caitlin could see they made the effort.

"My family wanted me to go to Notre Dame," Caitlin said. "At the end of the day they were like, you make the decision for yourself. But it's NOTRE DAME! 'Rudy' was one of my favorite movies. How could you not pick Notre Dame?"

Everyone in her high school wanted her to choose Notre Dame. Every year the top two or three students went to South Bend. It was ingrained in the culture. When she went on a campus visit, she wanted to love it. In fact, she got frustrated with herself for not loving it.

Notre Dame it would be. She called McGraw. It was the "smart" choice.

Next she called Bluder to break the bad news.

Bluder was at a field hockey game.

She stepped away from the field and called her staff.

"We're not gonna get her," she said.

Then the Iowa coaches waited for the dagger of an official announcement. For some reason it never came. Jensen had seen second-guessing before. She texted Caitlin's assistant AAU coach to see if it would be appropriate for her to reach out.

"I think I'd call her if I were you," the coach told Jensen.

So she did.

"What's up?"

"I haven't seen anything."

"Yeah, I've changed my mind."

Caitlin wanted to come to Iowa but thought her mom didn't want her to turn down Notre Dame. The AAU coach called Bluder and asked if Caitlin were to change her mind, would there be a spot for her. Three or so days later Caitlin again faced two phone calls. The first was terrifying. She needed to tell McGraw she had changed her mind.

"I'm 17 years old," she said, "and I'm sitting in my room and I'm sweating my ass off. I'm about to call her. She is an intimidating individual. She was really understanding. She kinda knew. She was great. Then I called Coach Bluder."

Dave and Lisa Bluder sat in the cozy basement of a fancy local restaurant. A fireplace warmed the room. They'd just sat down and ordered a drink.

"I can remember the exact table," Bluder said.

Her phone rang.

"Do you have a few minutes to talk?" Caitlin asked.

She committed on the spot. Bluder went back inside and ordered a bottle of champagne. Then she and Dave got another bottle and caught a ride to Jensen's house to celebrate some more. Caitlin remained in her bedroom, still nervous. She had made her two calls, but there was one more person who needed to know the news.

"Caitlin commits to us but didn't tell her mom," Jensen said laughing.

Her parents both call the family meeting that followed "emotional" and say they realized, truly in that moment, that their daughter had a vision for herself more ambitious and nuanced than any they could conjure. She seemed vulnerable and brave, and they deferred to her judgment.

Caitlin Clark was going to be a Hawkeye, and she told reporters her goal was to take Iowa to the Final Four. Some people rolled their eyes, but a bar had been set. Caitlin and I talked about this moment, the way that it felt like part of her search was to find other young women who cared about the game as much as she did. I asked her if this moment felt like the first decision she'd made completely herself.

"For sure," she said.

I asked if this was also the first time she had ever defied her mother, whom she adores -- a critical step on the path from childhood to adulthood. She stopped cold. It seemed like she'd never really thought about it before but now saw it clearly, from the high ground of the life she has built from talent and desire.

"Probably," she said finally.

THESE DAYS CAITLIN and her teammates travel around Iowa City in a pack, a tight-knit crew, as her celebrity pushes them further and further into their insular little world, which revolves around the riverside apartment complex where most of them live. They know everything about each other -- such as, say, that Caitlin's fake name for orders and hotel rooms is Hallie Parker from "The Parent Trap" -- and this past Halloween, they dressed in costumes and climbed up balconies to sneak into teammates' apartments to scare each other. Sydney Affolter nearly had a heart attack when she approached her sliding balcony door to find, staring at her, a full gorilla costume with a giddy Kate Martin inside.

These women are Caitlin's tribe, and they have been since she arrived on campus in fall 2020. The starting five for the first game of her career was the same as the starting five in the national championship game three years later. Monika Czinano, the center, a dominant force on the court, with a quirky Zen off it. "Well, I live on a floating rock," she'd say with a shrug after a tough loss. McKenna Warnock holding down the 4 with physicality and smarts, and Gabbie Marshall playing alongside with power and finesse. Caitlin ran point from her very first practice, while Martin began to shape the whole team in her competitive image, the daughter of a high school football coach who brought intensity to every part of the game.

"What she found is people who also put their entire life into basketball," Martin said.

Caitlin's teammates meanwhile discovered her talent came with impatience and temper. She blew up at practice. A lot of throwing her hands up in the air, stomping off the court and simply refusing to pass the ball to an open teammate if she didn't believe they'd deliver. It was the first time in her life she'd had to play with teammates who would not simply be run over. Warnock got in her face. So did Martin. The coaches pulled her aside. She's open. You have got to pass her the ball. Caitlin's answer, like a logical toddler, left them stuttering to find a response. Why would I pass her the ball when I'm taking more shots in the practice gym?

"I had expectations of them and they weren't meeting them," Caitlin said.

Because of COVID-19, all this occurred in private in the early days. A lot of the freshman year dust-ups happened in empty arenas. Her teammates came to understand that they were dealing with someone like Mozart. She wasn't rude, nor necessarily nice, just a different species. At one point that year a sports psychologist came in to work with the team. She started going around the room and asking the players when they felt stressed and anxious and how they reacted to those feelings. One by one, the young women described familiar symptoms and scenarios: sweaty hands, a fear of the free throw line, struggling with breathing, anxiety about the last possession.

Finally it was Caitlin's turn. She seemed a little embarrassed.

"I never am," she said.

Everyone in the room somehow understood she was being more vulnerable than cocky.

"Stone cold," one witness told me. "It was so cool."

I pressed her once on how she must have seemed to her teammates that first year. "People know I'll have their backs and I'll ride for them every single day," she said. "Obviously there is a switch that flips when I step on the court like I want to kill someone. I'm here to cause havoc. Some of the biggest challenges are I have all this emotion, I'm a freshman and I'm starting and how do I channel this? At times they were definitely like, 'Why is this girl a psycho?'"

The Hawkeyes lost games they should have won that year, still figuring out a way to have both a team and a superstar. The coaches put together video sessions completely devoted to her reactions. They had few notes about her actual play. She simply moved at warp speed, and even her most gifted teammates needed time to adjust. To learn how to breathe her air, to speak her language, to cross dimensions from their old world into the new one she was creating.

"If you see a practice, you might figure that out," Jensen told me once. "You gotta have whatever that is. You gotta be playing the game at Caitlin's pace. It's all processing. She's a half-second ahead."

The coaches saw her learning, too, looking to pass out of double- and triple-teams. Bluder kept telling them to give her latitude. Their main job, as she saw it, was to make sure they never put "her light under a bushel."

One day last year I sat down with Jensen to watch film of Caitlin's outbursts, which they had put together in reels.

"She does a lot of twirling," Jensen said with a sigh.

A twirl, a stomp off the court, slamming her hands into a wall. A reaction when the mistake was someone else's and not often enough a "my bad" when it was hers.

"She's not touchy-feely," Jensen said. "You're gonna meet her where she is."

The Iowa coaches didn't baby their prodigy. After one particularly bad performance, Caitlin caught a full barrage of anger and blame in the postgame locker room. She took it in public, but when she got into the car with her mom, she burst into tears. Not because of the yelling but because she wondered if she wanted something different than everyone else around her.

"Our goals are not aligned," she told her mom.

The Hawkeyes won 20 games and lost 10 her freshman year. They got beat in overtime at home by Ohio State. They beat No. 7 Michigan State in the Big Ten tournament. Caitlin won national co-freshman of the year. That helped with credibility.

"I want her in my foxhole," Martin said. "That's the type of player you want at the end of a game in a battle."

Maybe earlier than anyone, Martin realized that Caitlin's emotional outbursts were a byproduct of a young woman trying to marshal forces too powerful to fully control. Caitlin could take them to glory if they could help her be her best self. They all needed one another. Her teammates' understanding grew. They saw her get the blame for all the losses and knew the ball would always be in her hands with the game on the line. At a team meeting that season, when hurt feelings over Caitlin's lack of trust had come to the surface, it was Martin who rose to speak.

"I got something," she said.

The team fell silent.

"Everybody thinks they want to be Caitlin," she said. "I don't know if you want to be Caitlin."

The women knew immediately what she meant.

"The crown she wears is heavy."

The other four starters slowly accepted their role as The Caitlinettes. They won two games in the NCAA tournament before getting beat in the Sweet 16 by UConn. The headlines the next day back in Iowa would ratchet up the pressure -- Are the Hawks Ahead of Schedule? -- but in the postgame chaos Caitlin saw a familiar face approaching. It was Geno Auriemma. He told her how great she'd played and thanked her for her contribution to their sport. It felt like a victory. He finally saw what Bluder had seen all along. "He could see the greatness in me when I was a freshman," she said, "before everything unfolded when I was a junior."

That offseason Caitlin tried out for Team USA. Possession to possession, shot to shot, she played free and bold. Head coach Cori Close, whose day job was coaching the UCLA Bruins , saw the confidence immediately. "Women have been socialized to not want to take all the shine," she said. "She is an elite competitor who isn't scared to step into the moment."

But every team Caitlin had been on during the tryouts had lost its scrimmage, and after tryouts Close pulled her aside and put a question to her simply: "Do you want to be a really talented player who gets a lot of stats, or do you want to win?"

Caitlin made the roster, led the team to gold and was named MVP. "To Caitlin's credit, she really bought into that," Close said. "She went from being a really, really talented competitor to a winner."

WITHIN DAYS OF my arrival inside the Iowa basketball program, I started hearing stories about The Scrimmage. It seemed mythical the way the managers talked about it, but it really happened, on Oct. 20, 2021, just 15 days before the start of Caitlin's sophomore season.

"I watched it with my own two eyes!" former manager Spencer Touro said.

"The one where I went insane?" Caitlin asked.

"I think she made like five 3s in a row," Bluder said.

"I remember the scrimmage," Kate Martin said.

"How'd you hear about that?" Caitlin asked.

"I would get caught just watching her," Martin said.

"Down 25 with four minutes left," Jensen said.

"I had 22 points in less than two minutes," Caitlin said.

"She had seven 3s and a floater to tie at the buzzer," Jensen said.

"That's when I think she started to expand her game to the deep logos," Bluder said.

"There are clips," Caitlin said.

"It's a video game when she's on," Jensen said as she cued up silent footage from the actual scrimmage.

"I just start launching," Caitlin said.

"This is ... ," and Jensen starts laughing and can't stop.

"Trading 3 for 2," Caitlin said. "They're missing everything."

"... it's crazy," Jensen said, regaining her composure, watching Caitlin hit a 2, a 3, a 2 with an and-1, then another 3.

"I am making one-legged floaters," Caitlin said.

"Another off-balance 3," Jensen said, watching Caitlin grin on the film.

"She would take a couple of dribbles from half court," manager Isaac Prewitt said at a local campus restaurant over a plate of boneless wings.

"Everyone was freaking out," manager Will McIntire said, before taking a bite of his buffalo chicken wrap.

"They're going full tilt on her," Prewitt said. "They're not holding back."

"After I made my fifth 3 in a row, I ran to the bench," Caitlin said.

"You just have to let your jaw hit the floor," McIntire said.

"She's smiling now," Jensen said. "She knows."

"What is happening?" Caitlin screamed to her teammates on the bench.

"Look at the bench," Jensen said as she watched Caitlin scream at them and her teammates screaming back.

"I rarely do that," Caitlin said a little sheepishly.

"Now we're down three with 16 seconds left," Jensen said.

"Coach Abby was dying laughing," Caitlin said.

"So that tied it," Jensen said and the film finally ended, evidence that the birth of the legend really happened, was an actual thing, that none of the people in the gym that day will ever forget. Including a team of young girls who'd been invited to see a practice and happened upon the wildest one ever.

"They were going insane," Caitlin said.

"We're on the other side," McIntire said. "We are all like, oh my god."

"The coaches were just like, what the f---," Caitlin said.

Those few minutes changed the Iowa program forever. These Hawkeyes had been picked by the basketball gods to take part in something rare, something that would define them, that would be a legacy. That season they trailed by 25 points late in the third quarter against Michigan. Iowa dressed only seven players because of injuries.

Then Caitlin started firing wild, fearless 3-pointers. She made one from the logo, and during a subsequent timeout the team gathered in an excited circle around Bluder. Sharon Goodman leaned in.

"It's just like that scrimmage!" she said.

In the final six minutes, Caitlin hit four 3-pointers, scored 21 points and pulled the No. 21 Hawkeyes within five with 1:05 to go. The run stalled and the No. 6 Wolverines escaped with a win, but Iowa headed home in a kind of euphoria. The team could see the future. Weather delayed the team's flight and the players spread out around Signature Flight Service at the Willow Run private airport as highlights from the game played on every screen. Social media exploded. Caitlin Clark had just taken over a game, turning a Big Ten hostile arena into her cul-de-sac back in Des Moines.

The secret was out.

The Hawkeyes sat, just them, in a little pilot's waiting room with big recliners. Everyone groaned when ESPN aired her lone air ball. Caitlin sank into the cushions. She felt it, too. Friends and family kept sending her clips from the game as those same clips played on the three screens on the wall. She'd watched the "SportsCenter" top 10 her whole life and now she was on it. It felt like a moment. Not a mountaintop but proof to each of them that the ascent was real, that Caitlin really was stretching the canvas, exploding the usual logic about what was possible on a court and what was not. Maybe everything they thought they knew about basketball and the confines of 94 feet by 50 feet was wrong. Maybe the sophomore sitting in the oversized recliner was simultaneously breaking and remaking it.

THAT BRINGS ME to the other, inevitable remaking of her world that happened during her sophomore year. Talent like hers comes with a cost and, in our culture currently, that cost is fame. One night Iowa played a home game. Caitlin's parents, like always, drove over and cheered from the stands -- and nervously said rosaries, and screamed at officials, and paced, and switched seats if some bad energy had somehow infected their previous seating pattern -- and when the game ended, they rushed to the car to get home. Caitlin showered and changed and, close to 11 p.m., finally headed from the arena to her car. She was by herself. Two strange men approached through the shadows. Her pulse quickened.

They wanted her to sign some memorabilia.

The encounter freaked her out a little but freaked her parents out a lot, so they got with the university to work out a security plan. Looking back, Brent Clark said, they didn't understand at all what was about to happen. A legend was being born, one of those folk heroes who can only really exist in college sports: Steve McNair, Marcus Dupree, Tim Tebow, Caitlin Clark.

Fans around the conference loved to heckle her. She secretly loved the hostility because it made her games feel like the ones she'd watched on television as a child with her parents and brothers. Bluder said one Big Ten coach shouted at Caitlin during a game, "You're not as good as you think you are!"

"Were you nuclear?" I asked.

"I still am."

The Iowa coaches made progress with the body language in practice, and even if she couldn't exactly control her fiery side, Caitlin did know enough to recognize it in herself. She was becoming self-aware, learning how to maximize her unique combination of skill and drive. One day Jensen pulled up a body language clip that showed her simmering, clearly frustrated, but managing not to explode. There were victories to celebrate. The Hawkeyes won the 2022 Big Ten title and went into the tournament with high hopes, but in the second round they lost to Creighton. Blake Clark texted a photograph of the scoreboard to his sister. Motivation. All offseason, at random moments, he'd send the picture again.

"She eats that stuff up," Blake said.

LAST SEASON, CAITLIN'S junior year, arrived with enormous expectations, and she felt them. The starting five had started two full years of games together, two years of practices and team parties and late-night flights and bus rides. This was their last year together. Monika Czinano would head to the WNBA or overseas to continue her career, and McKenna Warnock was about to graduate on her pre-dentistry path and start applying to dental schools. This was Caitlin's best shot to deliver on her bold claim that they would reach the Final Four.

Before the season began, the Iowa coaches reached out to a performance consultant and author whom Caitlin had studied in high school. Brett Ledbetter first Zoomed with her on a Monday, the last week of July, and they started with the idea that the search for approval can get supercharged by her growing fame and success. Praise is a gateway drug, he told her. She talked about how she'd become addicted without even realizing what was happening.

"It really is a drug," she told him. "You're always craving it."

"How do you process what you just said?" he asked.

"I think it's scary to think about," she said.

"I think it's sad."

Two weeks later they Zoomed again. The topic was "unconditional peace," and she talked about her desire to be calm. She wanted to know which external forces made her feel full and which made her feel empty. Later she'd watch that video back with Ledbetter and find herself second-guessing her answers.

"Because?" he asked.

"I don't want to say the wrong thing," she told him. "And maybe I don't even really understand yet."

"Understand what?"

"What I'm chasing after."

There was a preseason practice on Oct. 15 when she pouted and raged. That went into the clip file. The coaches still prepared video packages of her body language and reactions. But these moments had softened, and slowed, and when confronted with them, her answers showed her growing ability to harness her gift. Bluder showed her one moment from practice when she just walked off the court into the tunnel and vanished.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" the coaches asked.

"It's good," Caitlin told them.

She told her coaches that she'd felt herself about to explode and decided to have a second alone, so that she didn't negatively impact her teammates.

"I didn't slam the chair," she told them.

They liked that. She liked that they liked it.

"I didn't throw my water bottle," she told them.

They liked that, too.

"I walked away," she said, and then smiled and added, "I didn't even scream in there."

THE SEASON BEGAN and Iowa got upset on the road at K-State, then lost to UConn at a tournament in Oregon and to NC State at home. The previous year's NCAA loss to Creighton weighed heavy and all she could think about was the specter of failure hanging over this season, and her career, and over the success of her decision to choose Iowa over Notre Dame, and just a lot of other unfocused, swirling anxiety.

"What if we get upset again?" Caitlin thought.

She needed help with the chaos of living in multiple dimensions of time, juggling past, present and future all at once, with tomorrow offering the circle's second chance but also arrows from the battlement walls.

"I'm almost playing this game because I have this expectation of all I want to accomplish," she'd say later, "but I'm missing the moments in between. I've got to find peace in my life."

The Iowa coaches encouraged her to "take off her cape" in front of her teammates. That would deepen their connection, which they'd need to win the close, fierce games that loomed for the Hawkeyes. Once a week, the players met to talk honestly about their hopes and fears. "Those were highly classified conversations," Ledbetter said, "and nothing was off the table. It was remarkable where they went as a group together. One of the things she embraced is vulnerability. The way she viewed vulnerability changed in the course of the season."

He asked her to smile at people first and see how that changed the energy in the room. She did and reported back. Everyone seemed happier and friendlier and more secure. These moments weren't tied to what she could accomplish but to how she showed up in the world with and for others. The rest of the country would discover Caitlin in the coming months, seeing her emerge almost fully formed as a superstar, but her teammates were watching from the front row as she built an interior mental warrior strong enough to support the weight of her talent and the expectations it brought.

Internal motivations to be the best and external motivations to reach records and milestones, to win, to earn praise and approval, overlapped for Caitlin. Each one feeding the other. She'd trapped herself in a perpetual state of chasing, where achievements brought no peace. Her coaches and mentors helped her see the lie in those dreams. The numbers, great as they were, fun as they have been to chase, weren't speaking to her soul, weren't why she played. The encouragement and praise, from fans, coaches, teammates, friends and her parents, were a sign she was doing something at a very high level but were never enough for her to feel as if she had arrived.

"You just want more of it," she said.

"That's not going to make me feel full at the end of the day," she said during another session. "In 20 years, banners and rings just collect dust. It's more the memories."

Caitlin settled on a mantra: Find peace in the quest.

IN THE FINAL regular-season game of the 2023 season, No. 2-ranked Indiana came to Carver-Hawkeye Arena. This night would let Iowa know if it'd come together in time to make a run, and would let Caitlin know if all the hard mental and emotional work she'd put in -- in addition to all the hours in the gym and weight room, where she complained to the strength coaches that they had made her thighs get too big for all her jeans -- would result in a player and a team functioning at the same frequency. She'd worked to find peace, and tonight that meant peace inside an arena that experienced Hawk fans insist they've never heard louder.

Iowa jumped out to a 10-2 lead with a 3-pointer by Kate Martin that ripped through the net so clean and so hard the television audience could hear the popping strings. Indiana fought back. Caitlin hit a big shot and pounded her chest and she stomped to her own bench and bellowed. Her teammates shouted back. The game was tied late when the Hoosiers went to the line with less than a second left and two foul shots to take the lead. Caitlin started yelling at the officials to review the clock.

"Time! Time! Time!"

She alone realized that the officials had messed up the clock. That's the basketball IQ coaches are forever talking about. She stayed calm and the officials went to check the replay monitors and sure enough, she was right.

The referees fixed the clock. Indiana made both free throws to take a two-point lead. The Hawkeyes had a full second and a half to get off a buzzer-beater.

The No. 2 team in the country got in its defensive set.

It was time.

Caitlin rushed toward a screen at the top of the key, the clock almost out, and every one of the 15,000 people in this storied old arena knew she was taking the last shot. Her opponents knew it, too. The pass came in. The clock started: 1.5 seconds, 1.4, 1.3. Off balance but with a smooth flick of the wrist, fingers pointed toward the floor, she fired the last shot of the game. The ball dropped and the arena exploded with sound. The noise overwhelmed the television microphones into a slush of feedback. Kate Martin doubled over in awe and jubilation and Caitlin took off sprinting for the baseline just like in practice.

Iowa won three straight games to win the Big Ten tournament, beating Ohio State in the final by 33 points. Caitlin felt invincible. Her brother Blake told me one night, almost in awe, that his sister has the rare thing that powered Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. "One of her superpowers is taking things personally," he said. "The fact that you're on a basketball court with her, that's a challenge. 'You should leave this court knowing you have no right to be on it. You need to go home and go work if you want to share the court with me and my team.' That's why you see her smiling as she is absolutely dismantling Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game, just cackling as she's coming up the floor with the ball. Because it's so easy and it's just basketball."

The next morning, back in Iowa City, Caitlin got up early and decided to attend her 8 a.m. class. She'd missed a few. Once all the students had taken their seats, the professor looked out into the crowd.

"Is Caitlin Clark here?"

She was sitting in the back row. The students turned to look her way. They started clapping, the room soon echoing with cheers.

The NCAA committee gave the Hawkeyes a No. 2 seed.

THREE YEARS OF WORK with her Iowa teammates, and a lifetime of dreaming before arriving on campus, had placed Caitlin Clark on the biggest stage in her sport with the exact right combination of ruthlessness, talent and desire to make that stage her own. Athletes dream of peaking at the perfect moment and soon the entire country would know what the Hawkeyes first learned in that long ago scrimmage. She wanted her moment. She made her intentions for March known when Bluder subbed her out of the first-round blowout win against Southeastern Louisiana. Furious, she stomped past her coach on the way to the bench.

"Forty minutes, six games," she barked.

That was it: 40 minutes in a game, six games for the championship.

The second round scared them all. The Georgia Bulldogs were coming to Carver-Hawkeye. They played physical SEC basketball. Caitlin told me she hadn't felt this much pressure all season. They'd lost the year before in the round of 32 to Creighton. Blake had been sending Caitlin the scoreboard picture for a whole year. The Bulldogs played a funky matchup zone that caused problems for opponents. Iowa got off to a slow start but found its rhythm. The game stayed close, as close as four points in the final minute. The Bulldogs kept fouling hard, playing with intensity, trying to stay in the game. During a television timeout, Caitlin stood next to the referee waiting to restart play. The ref held the ball, and a Georgia defender stood next to them.

"You're not as good as you think," the Bulldogs player said.

Caitlin smiled and turned to the ref.

"Do you think I'm a good basketball player?"

The referee started laughing. The Iowa coaches knew, in that moment, that she had entered chrysalis stage. She'd become the player she had always had the potential to be. Calm, ruthless. A winner. She simply would not engage with the negativity. She hit two foul shots with a second left and the game was over.

Bluder told her team to pack for two games in Seattle, and then for two games in Dallas at the Final Four. The Hawkeyes were not going home. They flew into Seattle and walked into the hotel where the players saw a DJ booth set up in the lobby. Caitlin pulled her hood up and went up and pretended to be spinning records in a club and everyone laughed.

"Oh my god, this kid," Iowa staff member Kathryn Reynolds said with a wistful laugh. "We were on the ride of our lives."

She grinned on the bus to and from practice and scrolled through pictures of her dog, Bella. In the Sweet 16, she scored 31 in an easy win against Colorado. The managers still talk about that game, which is often overlooked in the run of clutch performances that would follow.

"She just took it over," manager Prewitt said. "It was nuts. She has that ability to flip that switch."

"Can you tell when it's coming?" I asked.

McIntire just nodded.

"Honestly as someone who guards her," he said, "it's the look she gets and the way she starts dribbling the ball. Her mojo. Her body language."

"If someone gets up on her and talks s---," Prewitt said.

"You just get a tingle," McIntire said. "OK. Some s--- is about to go down."

He laughed.

"Usually it's against us during practice," he said.

The morning of the Elite Eight, facing fifth-seeded Louisville, Reynolds, who was basically Caitlin's chief of staff to help her navigate stardom, ran into her after the morning shootaround.

"How do you feel?" Reynolds asked.

Caitlin just shrugged her shoulders.

"I feel good," she said.

Reynolds said she knew then that Iowa would win.

"You can read her eyes really well," she said. "She has it all in her face. She was just in this different space. I remember the peace during shootaround, goofy then focused. It was almost bizarre to watch how comfortable she seemed."

Caitlin believed it was the biggest game of her life.

She walked onto the court and felt no nerves or anxiety.

I must've raised an eyebrow or something when she told me that because she smiled and said, "I swear to God I would tell you."

She walked up to Reynolds.

"This is gonna be a great game," she told her. "This is gonna be awesome."

Caitlin stepped into the spotlight, famous for the first time from coast to coast, drawing record audiences to the broadcasts. In the first quarter of the Elite Eight game against Louisville, she went on fire. Hit a 3. Iowa got a stop. Hit another 3. After a turnover Caitlin pushed a 2-on-1 fast break across the center line. Once there would have been no scenario in which she didn't try to score. But she'd been trying to listen to her coaches telling her that real life cannot be lived in a total isolation. She needed to share. The defender closed, perfectly lured to get left flat-footed by a patented Caitlin juke, but instead she threw a long bounce pass that hit McKenna Warnock perfectly in stride but bounced off her hands and out of bounds. The roof would have lifted off the building had the pass led to an easy bucket. It looked, honest to goodness, like a pass Magic Johnson might have thrown in the early summer of 1988, but it earned the Hawkeyes no points. The cameras focused on Caitlin, who did not react at all. Her coaches all noticed.

During a run in the next quarter she attracted a double-team and dished to a wide-open Warnock for 3 on two consecutive game-busting possessions. Iowa never trailed again. Warnock pointed at Caitlin as they turned and ran back on defense. During the timeout that followed, Louisville coach Jeff Walz ranted and raved and screamed in the face of one of his guards like a toddler, and that's what a confident Caitlin Clark can do to a grown man: turn him into a joke of a child, red-faced, all screams and no plan to make the bleeding stop. The Hawkeyes took the lead and then went on a 9-0 run in the second quarter. Caitlin scored or assisted on every one of the points. When Iowa won she ran to Bluder and wrapped her up in a hug.

"We did it," Caitlin said.

She finished with 41 points. She had 12 assists and 10 rebounds, a triple-double, just owning the game and the vibrating electrons that created the spaces in it. The Hawkeyes were going to the Final Four.

ON THE DAY of the national semifinal against South Carolina, Caitlin watched some video of her pouting through a practice back on Oct.15. She didn't recognize that old version of herself and felt like she'd braved the storms of the season and postseason and had emerged stronger. She walked onto the court and heard the 19,288 fans screaming, faced into that noise. Something almost metaphysical happened to her. Even six months later she still struggled to believe it happened. But when she first stepped onto the court before that South Carolina game, she felt like she left one dimension behind and moved into another. She told herself that she'd worked so hard for this moment and it was now hers to own. Most of all she felt peace in the quest. Only a few rhythm masters ever reach that state of elevated consciousness. Everyone who tastes it wants more, their eyes opened to new worlds of color.

Iowa upset the undefeated, top-seeded and defending champion Gamecocks 77-73. Caitlin scored 41 points including five 3-pointers. She showed heart in the tense moments. Afterward, in a room waiting on the press to come ask her questions, she shared a private moment with Bailey Turner, the sports information director. He described her later as completely calm, empty and peaceful.

The Hawkeyes lost in the title game to LSU.

The LSU coaches had given the Tigers a devastatingly accurate scouting report on the Hawkeyes. Associate head coach Bob Starkey wrote that Caitlin would score her points and there was nothing they could do to stop her. The key was to manage how she scored those points. She averaged 27 in the Iowa wins and 30 in the losses. The key to beating the Hawkeyes, Starkey argued, was stopping Monika Czinano, who scored 19 when her team won but only 11 when they lost.

Against LSU she scored 13 and fouled out. McKenna Warnock fouled out, too. Caitlin scored 30 in the defeat.

She went to a little room beneath the arena for a news conference.

Someone asked her, "What's next for this team?"

She tried not to laugh. This question landed in her deepest anxieties. She'd been trying to face down the fear that nothing she ever did would be good enough and now here was proof that someone else thought that, too. She wanted to make time stop. Tomorrow, with its hope and danger, loomed always. Peace felt more and more like the ability to keep tomorrow out of today.

"I don't want to think about what's next," she said once. "I don't want to feel like I always have to do more and be more."

Months later, as we talked about the Final Four, I asked her if she felt like she knew herself.

"That's a journey I'm still on," she said.

She smiled.

"I'm only 21," she said.

This is a story about being 21.

"You're trying to know yourself," she said, "while you're trying to become this great person."

MODERN FAME IS a radioactive thing that corrodes everything it touches and consumes some people completely. Human beings are designed to live in small tribes, where the most important part of everyday life revolves around direct interactions. That vital way of being is undercut again and again by fame. It really messes some people up. Caitlin has been fighting to feel and be and be seen as human since high school, even as she has strived for things that can only be described as superhuman.

After Georgia and Colorado got chippy, especially when Caitlin would go on a run of logo 3s, her confidant Kathryn Reynolds told her that only she had control of her mind and that nobody could break through that barrier without her permission. She had the power to keep them at bay.

Against Louisville in the Elite Eight, Caitlin hit her sixth 3-pointer and then waved her hand in front of her face, an imitation of wrestler John Cena's can't-see-me move. It was a spontaneous nod to Reynolds' advice. Cena almost immediately tweeted at her. So did LeBron James, who called Caitlin "so COLD!" More people tuned in to ESPN to see Iowa play Louisville than had watched any regular-season NBA game on the network all season.

When LSU beat Iowa in the title game, star center Angel Reese, an intense, talented player who had 15 points and 10 rebounds in the win, made the can't-see-me gesture back at Caitlin as the clock wound down. Postgame social media lit up, some criticizing Reese for showing up an opponent, others saying that kind of criticism showed a racial double standard.

Earlier on Final Four weekend, Lisa Bluder had spoken of the competitiveness she anticipated in the semifinal against South Carolina by saying the game would be a bar fight. After the loss, Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley objected to ways she said her team had been characterized all season.

"We're not bar fighters. We're not thugs. We're not monkeys. We're not street fighters. This team exemplifies how you need to approach basketball."

The moments all intersected in the days after the tournament ended. The semiotics of race and the fires of fighting to win fueled each other. Tough talk between two elite head coaches opened onto difficult public conversations about the consequences of language. And on-court gestures from one superstar to another were interpreted by some as clashes between identities that extended beyond the game.

Even if they could see you...they couldn't guard you! Congrats on the historic performance @CaitlinClark22 and to @IowaWBB on advancing to the Final Four! @MarchMadnessWBB #WFinalFour https://t.co/QvpYDTESwb — John Cena (@JohnCena) March 28, 2023

In her postgame news conference, Reese said: "All year I was critiqued about who I was. I don't fit the narrative. I don't fit in the box that you all want me to be in. I'm too hood. I'm too ghetto. You all told me that all year. But when other people do it, you all don't say nothing."

When Iowa got home from the Final Four, Turner, the sports information director, arranged an interview for Caitlin with ESPN. Caitlin thought the questions would focus on the Wooden Award, which she had just won, but they were mostly about the end of the championship game.

"Angel is a tremendous, tremendous player," she said. "I have nothing but respect for her. I love her game.

"I think everybody knew there was going to be a little trash talk the entire tournament. It's not just me and Angel. I don't think she should be criticized."

The stakes of playing on the stage Caitlin and Angel play on are high, and they know it. "Facts," Caitlin told me later.

When the TV interview ended, she started shaking uncontrollably.

"I'm doing this in my apartment bedroom," she said.

She texted her mom and Bluder and asked how she'd done. Both told her she'd done great.

"If you do one wrong thing your life can really end," she said.

AFTER LOSING TO LSU the Hawkeyes cried in the locker room. "Bawled," Caitlin said. She and Kate Martin hugged McKenna Warnock and Monika Czinano. They'd become sisters. Two weeks of adrenaline ran out, and they awakened to lives that had changed in ways they never could have imagined on the flight out to Seattle. Now they just wanted to go home.

Everyone headed back to the team hotel to meet their families and friends. Caitlin hadn't even taken off her uniform.

She kept it together until she saw her father.

He waited for her in the lobby.

She burst into tears and buried her head in his shoulder.

"You have so much to be proud of," he told her.

"I know but still it's sad, Dad," she said.

She went upstairs and stood in the shower for a long time and let the adrenaline and stress run out with the draining water. Is this real life? She tried to understand what was different. Then she led her teammates three blocks away from the hotel to toast their season. The name of the bar was Happiest Hour, and the staff didn't seem prepared for two dozen very tired, very nostalgic, very thirsty women.

"I don't think you should write about any of this," Caitlin said with a smile, "but I'm gonna tell you anyway."

An Iowa fan asked Caitlin if he could buy the team a drink.

"Twenty-two shots!" she said.

Soon a tray showed up. Twenty-two. That night might end up being Caitlin's favorite memory from college. This group of women truly loved one another and for the rest of their lives when they looked at their Final Four rings, or came to some anniversary and saw the banner hanging in the rafters, it is that love they would remember. And evenings like the one in Dallas after they lost the biggest game of their lives but still had one another. She changed her mind about wanting people to know about that night.

"You can write about that," she said. "I don't really care."

They stayed out all night, sad, yes, but sad together, which was its own kind of joy. They told stories, about being stuck in traffic at Maryland or the shot Caitlin hit against Indiana. They all dragged themselves out of bed in time to catch an afternoon flight back to Iowa, and the team leaders kept doing head counts and asking if everyone was present and accounted for and if everyone was OK. They wore hoodies and sunglasses. Kate Martin cradled a Jimmy John's submarine sandwich in the lobby. No. 5, the Vito -- salami, capocollo and provolone. Caitlin gloated because she'd had the foresight to pack before the game. The players shared pictures and retold the stories. They limped to the plane and flew back home.

THEY WENT THEIR separate ways, and Caitlin sank into her summer. She signed millions of dollars of contracts and flew to Los Angeles to shoot big-budget commercials where a grip held an umbrella over her head to block the sun.

She tried to hold it for herself.

She couldn't believe how much free stuff she got.

"This is why the rich are so rich," she said. "They get things for free. It's so weird."

McKenna Warnock started dental school. Monika Czinano tried and failed to land one of those 144 WNBA roster spots. Kathryn Reynolds got a job offer she couldn't refuse, running a new women's softball league.

Caitlin got gifts for her teammates from her sponsors. Huge loads of free Nike gear including these rare Dunks. Bose headphones. She went to big corporate meetings with her parents following along stunned, proud, bewildered. The PGA Tour swung through Iowa, and she played with Masters champion (and native Iowan) Zach Johnson in front of packed galleries. She practiced for days before her first tee shot, not wanting to embarrass herself. The next morning, she came to an Iowa workout and, as the managers said, "torched everyone."

"It was unbelievable," Prewitt told me.

McIntire just shook his head.

"Hadn't shot a basketball in four days," he said.

"I think she does as good a job of balancing it as she can," Prewitt said.

The Iowa women's season tickets sold out for the first time ever on Aug. 2. Lisa Bluder and Jan Jensen were sitting together when they got the call from the ticket office and both women cried. They'd never ridden a wave like this one, after a lifetime dedicated to furthering their sport. They also worried about the toll all this exponentially growing attention was having on their young phenom.

I asked Jensen once how she could tell when Caitlin felt overwhelmed.

Easy, she told me.

She always hits the practice gym with a bounce, with a smile and an inner ferocity, and when she is drained, it's immediately obvious.

"When was the last time you saw her like that?" I asked.

There was a long pause.

"This summer she was really busy," Jensen said finally.

The Iowa coaches found themselves organizing the entire team practice calendar around Caitlin's travel schedule. They wanted her to be able to go receive awards and soak up the glory. But it all got to be a lot.

"She wants to be a kid, too," Jensen said. "It's summer, you know? This summer was taxing on her."

I ARRIVED A MONTH later to find Caitlin Clark trying to be all things to all people, feeling the expectations of what's next while raging at the inexperience of her new forwards and centers. She always seemed to know when I was at practice and would thank me for coming. I sense she does that with every visitor. I have written about athletes for two decades but I've never, until now, watched someone change from a solid into a liquid and a liquid into a gas. That knowledge made the whole industry of profiling great athletes seem almost silly, because whatever "makes her tick" is deeply internal and unknown, even to her. She was leaving an old life behind and learning how to fit comfortably in a new one. I found myself texting with her father all the time, and he found comfort in his own mantra. Stay hungry and humble. I began to watch her play like the Iowa coaches did, focusing on the moments during practice and games when she faced frustration, to see how she would react.

The coaches and players saw everything. Caitlin getting furious about no-calls in practice. With success has come a raised metabolism. There haven't been any fist fights inside the team but there has been a lot of preamble. Screaming and cursing. This is a championship-caliber team trying to reclaim the form that earned it that status, so that the reality inside the basement of Carver-Hawkeye often differs dramatically from the exterior reputation. The rankings all season called Iowa a top-five team, but Caitlin Clark knew better. Therefore everyone else knew, too. At one scrimmage, Caitlin's anger at the no-calls translated into bad shots -- she often fires up wilder and wilder attempts when she's mad, even now -- and she missed two-thirds of them. Nobody is harder on Caitlin Clark than Caitlin Clark.

"I suck!" she'll bark at herself on the bench.

During the scrimmage she threw a pass that bounced off Gabbie Marshall's hands. She looked over at the coaches in disgust, and they could see the fit coming. Everyone worried that they'd gone back in time to her freshman year. This again? became a refrain.

The season went on, with the public accolades growing, and I kept calling people inside the program and showing up when I could.

"What is the Caitlin patience meter currently?" I'd often ask.

"Decent," I was told once.

At that day's practice, assistant Abby Stamp told Caitlin there would be no March magic without her teammates.

"You're gonna need her," Stamp said.

"Yeah but she missed me on the cut," she replied.

A few days before, Jensen had stood up for one of her bigs. Caitlin had been barking orders, and the coach told her to settle down.

"But ..." Caitlin started.

"Stop butting me," Jensen said. "Throw her the ball."

"Throw it to her."

Caitlin wanted more than anything to go back to the Final Four, because she'd tasted the glory but also the calm and focus of stepping onto the court against South Carolina.

I asked her about the drama at practice.

"I have these new players and I'm not comfortable and they're not comfortable," she told me. "How do I navigate having patience? Giving them confidence? They don't have the confidence of minutes."

She and her crew -- Kate, McKenna, Mon, Gabbie -- had been to war together.

"The amount of huge games we were in last year," she said, starting to visibly percolate at the memory of such beautiful intensity. "WAKE UP! We're here. We're playing Louisville in the Elite Eight. We're playing Georgia in the round of 32 and it's a four-point game with 30 seconds to go!"

Her great flaw in the context of the team, she has learned, is her complete lack of a poker face. If she feels it, she wears it.

"Your one compliment to somebody can give them so much confidence," she said. "It's scary almost how much power ... Because it goes both ways. You get upset with them, they're crumbling."

She switched to third person to mock herself and rolled her eyes as she talked.

"Caitlin Clark believes in them, what more do they need?"

She snapped her fingers.

"I can never have a bad reaction," she said.

She worked hard to get better, to relearn the lessons of the past, which seemed like new problems because of her new and growing fame and the expectations that came with it, both the external ones put on her by the world and the internal ones put on her by herself. There's a John Updike quote I love about the mask eating the face that seemed to apply to what Caitlin was experiencing. The Iowa coaches were hyper aware of that possibility, that the famous Caitlin Clark would swallow the goofy girl they'd known, and they believed at the end that they had all mostly succeeded. Caitlin had managed to protect herself. Her real self.

There were positive moments that reflected all her hard work. Great moments that allowed everyone to dream of March. Once at practice Caitlin came flying down the court in transition. Addi O'Grady was wide open around the free throw line. Caitlin got to the logo and jacked up a 3-pointer, which went in. O'Grady never once yelled for the ball.

Jensen threw up her hands in disgust and yelled, "Ugh!"

Caitlin came right to her.

"The reason I didn't throw it ..." she began to explain.

Jensen cut her off and said that it was Addi's fault for not screaming for the ball and that the coaches were annoyed about that. Bluder and Jensen wanted all the centers to act like Monika Czinano and expect the ball every single trip down the court, to call for it, to deliver once she received the pass. To them Caitlin didn't do anything wrong. The center needs to demand respect. "She can detect weakness," Bluder told me. "I think she likes strong people. People that are good leaders. People who will use their voice."

The coaches also believed Caitlin taking it on herself to explain what she was seeing meant that all their messages were getting through and she was paying attention. During a later practice she threw an errant entry pass to O'Grady. The ball fell uselessly away. All the coaches turned to see what would happen next. They held their breath.

Caitlin made eye contact with Addi.

"My bad," Caitlin said.

THE HAWKEYES EXPERIENCED incredible highs and lows together.

They beat Virginia Tech.

Caitlin appeared on the ManningCast for "Monday Night Football."

They lost to K-State.

Jason Sudeikis and Sue Bird came to sit courtside. During a television timeout, Sudeikis did his Ted Lasso dance on the jumbotron and Carver-Hawkeye rocked in the reflected celebrity. Afterward Caitlin and her family took Jason out to dinner. They sat in the window at Basta on Iowa Avenue.

"He talks just like he does in the show!" Caitlin gushed to her mom after.

One night in February, forward Hannah Stuelke scored 47 points against Penn State on a night Caitlin had 15 assists. "I think our connection is amazing. I love playing with her," Stuelke said.

Three days later, Caitlin went scoreless in the fourth quarter and the Hawkeyes blew a 14-point lead in a loss to Nebraska.

Her coaches worried and hoped.

"I want her to learn how to manage all this," Jensen told me. "The NIL stuff. The popularity. The stardom. I want her to manage that and still love the game, you know?"

Everyone looked to make sure Caitlin didn't lose her sense of wonder.

"She seems like a child when we bring dogs into the facility and she gets on the floor and is rolling around with them and being a kid and screaming," Jensen said. "She goes from one extreme to the other so quickly: 'I'm this unbelievable athlete' to 'I'm this little kid.'"

They experienced success, celebrity, frustration and failure. I met the team in Columbus, Ohio, in late January. Nothing went right for the Hawkeyes. Kate Martin raged at the officials and her opponents and Caitlin ended up in the rare position of being the voice of reason, urging calm and moderation. None of their shots fell. If Iowa gets beat in March, it will be because of an afternoon like the one they had in Columbus. With a minute left I went down into the narrow hallway outside the visitors locker room. I heard a commotion but didn't see what happened. Suddenly the campus police officer who travels with the team helped a slumping Caitlin past me, her head thrown back in pain. An Ohio State student storming the court had collided with her. Caitlin's mom was on a rampage in the bowels of the arena, furious about the lack of security. We all went to the airport and flew back to Cedar Rapids, where university charter buses picked us up to drive back to campus. We parked outside the garage where the players keep their cars for away games. Everyone climbed off the bus -- except Caitlin. She was in the little bathroom in the way back throwing her guts up.

I left her and went to the garage. The first person I saw was Kate Martin. I asked what was wrong.

"Migraines," Martin said. "She gets 'em really bad."

THE NEXT DAY Caitlin and a group of teammates got ready at their off-campus apartments. They changed into fancy clothes and called an Uber and were pulling out of the complex when they saw a whole bunch of flashing lights. As they got closer they realized it was their teammate Ava Jones who'd been in the wreck. Ava hasn't played a minute for the Hawkeyes; two days after she committed, she and her family were at a basketball tournament in Louisville when a drug-addled driver ran them down on the sidewalk. Ava suffered a traumatic brain injury and devastating knee and shoulder injuries. Her father died. The Iowa coaches honored their commitment and she is an emotional member of the team even if she can't play. Her teammates worry over her all the time. Now she'd been in a fender bender.

"Just cancel the ride," Caitlin said. "That's our teammate, can you just stop?"

The cops working the accident tried to keep the young women away but stood little chance of stopping them.

"We're her teammates!" Caitlin said.

Molly Davis pulled up, on her way back to the apartments from a massage. Soon coach Raina Harmon showed up, too. Before too long half the team was standing in the middle of the street. They all stayed with Ava until it was clear she was OK. Some of the Hawkeyes talked to her, while others talked to the police and paramedics. Caitlin kept texting her mother, who was waiting with Brent and me for her 22nd birthday dinner.

Finally they made it. Caitlin's migraine, which she always suffers through without complaint, had blessedly vanished. We sat down and they recounted what had happened with Ava. For the next few hours everyone laughed and told stories. We finished our meals, and the restaurant brought over a riff on a chocolate chip cookie. Caitlin loves chocolate chip cookies. The teammates told Anne what they saw of the incident after the game in Columbus. Kate Martin, they said gleefully, threatened to fight the Ohio State student section. She'd be Charles Oakley to Caitlin's Michael Jordan. Everyone laughed. Caitlin the loudest.

"I see Caitlin on the ground and I just start seeing red," Martin explained.

When the game ended Caitlin looked to find the Buckeyes to shake their hands when all the fans rushed the court. The Iowa coaches started urgently telling the Iowa players to get to the locker room. Caitlin took off at a dead sprint -- "which was problem number one," she said -- and never saw the Ohio State student until they collided. When she picked up her phone, she saw a text from her former football player brother: "Next time explode through their sternum."

Everyone at the dinner table laughed about that.

Martin ran up right after the collision to see her best friend on the ground.

"What happened?"

"I got drilled," Caitlin said.

"A fan ran into her," said Jada Gyamfi , a forward who wears No. 23.

Around 4 a.m., once they got home from the game, Caitlin got a text from Monika Czinano asking if she needed to hire a hit man. Martin sounded embarrassed as she described to all of us at dinner how she stalked around cursing at people and trying to find someone to fight. She was repeating the wilder things she said and then Caitlin started doing her impression of Martin.

"Whatever," Kate said. "I'm ride or die for my ladies."

Caitlin's parents paid. This was their treat. Then Kate sheepishly revealed she'd had a bit of parking trouble when she'd pulled up outside earlier. Her car was, she admitted, parked on top of a curb and a snowdrift. She needed help pushing it out. Jada, Will McIntire and I got low and started to push. Martin sat behind the wheel. We all made sure not to let Caitlin anywhere near the operation. None of us wanted to be responsible for a tire rolling over her foot and ending the greatest college basketball season anyone has ever had.

"Twenty-two is not touching this car!" I said.

Gyamfi laughed.

"This is a job for two-three," she said.

"I gotta get this on video!" Caitlin said.

We all pushed, then leaned in and pushed harder, as Kate spun her tires then caught a little traction and lurched to safety. Everyone cheered, me included, and Caitlin was part of the action, but also separate from it, her life pulling her in one direction and her teammates in another. Finally, she stopped recording and I watched them all go out into the night, still celebrating.

THIS IS A STORY about being 22. Do you remember when you first started on the road to your dreams? That's where Caitlin Clark finds herself in March 2024. She has announced her intention to enter the WNBA draft. Her future has begun, the world she built during four life-changing years in Iowa City. All the things she wants to be are there to be grasped. Her games draw bigger audiences than many NBA games. She is at the epicenter of sports -- a superstar without caveats or adjectives. She isn't important because of symbolic broken barriers but because she steps onto a 94-foot-long rectangle and dominates it. In the month after her birthday, Caitlin Clark kept rising to the occasion. She broke the NCAA women's career scoring record -- the record-breaking shot came from 30 feet, three of her career-high 49 -- then the actual women's scoring record held by Lynette Woodard, who got invited to Iowa for the event and revelled in the standing ovation she received from Carver-Hawkeye. Then on senior night she broke Pete Maravich's men's career scoring record. No human being playing Division I basketball has ever scored more. The rapper Travis Scott came to see her break Pistol Pete's record and posed for pictures with the whole team. Jake from State Farm came. He wore a designer jacket made from Caitlin's jersey. Nolan Ryan snuck in beneath a baseball cap with his granddaughters. It was important to him that they witness Caitlin. The television ratings shattered records. Patrick Mahomes praised her. So did LeBron James. These moments, and so many others, happened in public. Her brother and I texted back and forth during these incredible few weeks when it seemed like the entire country had turned its attention to her greatness.

Everyone around her seemed happy. Not because of records. Not because of what excited the rest of the basketball world but because of something that happened offstage just eight days before she broke the NCAA's women's record. Opponents, beware. On Feb. 7, the Hawkeyes held a practice before Penn State came to Iowa City. The season's metabolism had started to peak. Kate Martin stopped practice to preach about the importance of knowing the scouting report, and the whole team hung on her every word, and Jensen looked over to catch Bluder staring with admiration and joy at Martin's command of the room.

A bit later, during a scrimmage, Addi O'Grady, who had at one point retreated into an introverted shell in response to the barrage of pressure from Caitlin, got down on the post and just knocked one of the team managers on his ass.

This was everything Caitlin Clark loved about basketball. The competition, the aggression, the way that every moment produced a winner and a loser, the willingness to go hard, to risk. O'Grady had won the moment. She'd know what that felt like now. She could do it again. Caitlin ran to her. She jumped up and down and screamed and praised and threw around joyous curses and exaltations. The coaches beamed. This was a team. Jan Jensen cried about it later, she said. They'd traveled the road. They'd put last season in its place and made this one its own. It was February. The doors were closed and there were no cameras. Nobody sat courtside or wanted autographs. Caitlin was at the center of it but not hitting 3s or firing passes behind her back. She was all out in praise of a teammate. She believed.

"YES!" she screamed. "ADDI!!"

These are the moments the team will remember decades from now, when they gather as middle-aged women. Renting yachts and pushing cars out of the snow. Posting up on the block. This is a story about being 21, yes, and 22, but also about being 41, and 52, and older than that. The Iowa Hawkeyes of the Caitlin Clark years will stand one day at center court beneath their banners, with husbands and wives and partners, with kids and grandkids. They know this. And they know they will find themselves unable to describe how it felt all those years ago, when they were young and magic and ready for March.