Essay by ALEXANDRA REBOREDO admitted into Hamilton College

Source: https://www.hamilton.edu/admission/apply/college-essays-that-worked

When my mother started a cosmetology business to support our family, I lost my sense of home. Our dining table was no longer for sharing a steaming plate of white rice, ground beef, and black beans. Instead, it was for crisp white towels, bundles of thin, pointed wooden sticks, sterilized tweezers and scissors, and hundreds of bottles of polish.

At first, her clients were quiet. I heard nothing but the gentle hum of the air conditioner accompanied by the whirring of the electric foot rasp, and the occasional ring of a phone echoing through the hallway of closed doors. As her clients returned, they developed familiarity — the one with bleach-blonde hair in heaping curls bound together on the top of her head, her shrill, high-pitched voice wanting her nails lacquered in the darkest crimson; the 50-year-old Cuban woman who always brought pastelitos and complained about her single life, hoping a new haircut would bring her the man of her dreams; the hearty laugh that boomed through the house every Saturday morning was my human alarm ...