When the file requires the essays to address weaknesses and tough issues, humor should be left out altogether. Serious issues do not give the applicant the leisure to be light and witty. However, when the file will not be encumbered by explanations, the essays can be made less heavy and boring by injecting humor. This does not mean that your essay should read like a Tonight Show monologue. A good hook in the beginning and a clever line or two, are most often all that are appropriate.
We're enclosing two different samples of diversity statements that had the luxury of being humorous. The applicants had no arrests, no academic probations, no deaths in the family, nothing that required a really somber tone.
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My father always loved cards. His fondness did not extend to playing card games but, rather, to using them as a teaching tool for my future. He would sit me down and say (in a heavy Korean accent) "Son, I gave up everything to come to this country and give you the best cards. Every day, you take the strong hand I gave you and carelessly throw it away." Although he was constantly referring to my Korean heritage as one of my best cards (my very own Ace up my sleeve), I remember thinking how absurd this notion was. My minority status shook my sense of belonging in the greater society around me.
At the urging of my father, I have been practicing Taekwondo since I was about six years old. Koreans feel as if Taekwondo represents a symbolic amalgamation of Korean history and beliefs. My grandfather practiced Taekwondo, as did my father. I still recall being dragged to Taekwondo class as a young child. While I feigned interest in order to placate my father, I strove to excel in mainstream sports, such as wrestling, in order to gain some sort of legitimacy with my peers.
During high school, I was able to achieve success in wrestling, winning the District Wrestling Championships for the first time. After the wrestling season, I turned my attention to Taekwondo. My status as a member of the popular crowd allowed me to feel a lot more comfortable in my own skin. For whatever reason, I decided to, for the first time, take my commitment to Taekwondo seriously. I found myself renting Bruce Lee films and encouraging my friends to watch these films along with me, and proudly telling my friends about Taekwondo tournaments I was entering. I spent a period of about 4 months in intensive training at my dojo. Before long, I was winning tournaments in multiple categories. The apex of this journey occurred during the summer of my junior year when I was able to compete in the Taekwondo State Championships of New Jersey. I was able to win First Place in the forms category, qualifying me for the Junior Olympics, while making me the State Champion in this particular category.
This process was an important first step in my personal maturation. I realized that being held hostage by the stereotypes others hold can be just as damaging as being attacked for ones beliefs or identity. It was liberating to pursue my talents in a sport without worrying about whether success in this sport would make me too Asian. For the first time, a comparison to Bruce Lee did not seem so bad after all.
My struggle with my father and the Korean culture he represents is still not over. My realization that part of my own insecurities growing up can be attributed to a lack of recognizable Korean faces in the public sphere has informed my professional goals. I hope to use my legal education and political career to provide a voice for Asians that extends beyond restrictive ethnic lines. Having a deep love and appreciation for ones own culture should not equate to a lack of participation in the public arena. By providing me with a very specific purpose and voice, I have found that my Korean American identity serves as one of those advantageous cards that I have been dealt; my father will be happy to know that I am not about to squander it.
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Unlike the other samples in this section, the first essay and the second have nothing to do with each other. They are both samples of essays with a lighter tone. While the young man above was born in the USA, the next applicant spent his formative years "abroad."
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How do you know when you have a grasp on what it means to live in a "postmodern" post-Soviet country? When you have realized that you don't want to live there anymore. While I was far from having such an "existential" grasp on reality at ten years old, one thing was certain - my friends and I were not optimistic about our future. Just a couple of years ago we all dreamed about becoming pilots, astronauts, and important diplomats. Now, as we watched our parents work two or three jobs simply to make ends meet, we realized the futility of our dreams and high expectations.
Around this time, one of my friends got to travel "abroad" with his parents. I don't remember just where exactly Andrew went with his parents that year (either Poland or Hungary), but I do distinctly remember his coming back to school after fall break. Wearing new snow-white Nike shoes and a "NY Yankees" baseball hat, he told us of all the amazing things he saw "abroad." He told us of supermarkets "with like fifty brands of smoked sausage," all sorts of toys, clothes, and - most remarkably - "no lines." (We were pretty sure Andrew was making that part up). From this time on we referred to this magical world only as "the abroad." Naturally, Andrew became the most popular kid in our school; at least until someone else came back from visiting "the abroad."
So, as one can imagine, my friends and I started dreaming about going abroad someday. First, these were just fantasies. However, we found ourselves in high school still holding on to the same fantasies. And one day, as my friend Ivan was telling us about his cousin's impression of Germany, I said, "What's the point of just dreaming about going 'abroad'? Let's act like men. Let's do something about this." We weren't quite sure what we were going to do, or what it meant to "act like men," but it sounded good. Concluding that no matter where we would travel or immigrate, knowing English would help, we all started learning English. The amount of instruction in English we received in the classroom was negligible, so I convinced my mother to pay for private lessons with a linguistics professor at the University.
With time, I learned about international student exchange programs, through which one could come to the United States, and study in an American high school for a semester or two. After applying to several exchange programs, I was selected to a private school in Huntsville, Alabama. I had no idea where exactly Alabama was, or what it was like, but I thought: "Hey, it's America, right?"
I arrived to Huntsville in December 1994. "America" was nothing like I thought it would be. There were no skyscrapers, no "Broadway" style musicals, no fancy night clubs. Instead, there was a small Southern town, with countless Protestant churches, a mall, and a NASA Space Flight Center - the single most significant local landmark. My host family went to church three days a week, and often invited me to go with them. I did not want to be impolite, so I finally agreed. "West Huntsville Church of Christ" was quite an experience. When at one time I asked my host parent Jim why there were no black people in their church he told me that it's better for "people to congregate with those who are most like them." When I told my host parents that I was thinking about moving to the States one day, Linda, my host mother, blushed, and Jim ardently tried to persuade me to go back home to Ukraine and stay there, saying "It's better for everyone to live in their own country."
As I now reflect on the six months I spent in Huntsville, Alabama I am thankful that I was too young to fully recognize the deeply-rooted racism, ethnocentrism, and fundamentalism all too often ubiquitous in the socially-segregated South. I learned that the country which I once considered part of the "magic world" was plagued by its own problems, no less serious than the ones back home, and that in some parts of this magic world "freedom and opportunity" were not equally available to a black person or a person with an Eastern European accent. At the same time, having traveled a little across the U.S. while living in Alabama, I fell in love with America, and with the freedom and opportunity one could enjoy here.
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Both of these essays are entertaining; when you have no problems to explain, you might want to make yourself memorable in a similar fashion.