俗话说one should learn from the best! 今天，TD的文书老师Scarly就为大家带来三篇录取哈佛大学本科的文书点评。同时，本周日（8月6日）上午10:30，Scarly老师还将带来“手把手教你如何写出一个好故事：哈佛文书点评”公开课，详解另外三篇更值得大家借鉴的哈佛大学本科录取主文书是如何写成的！欢迎同学们前来学习交流~
1. 主题：书店之旅与知识的继承 关键词：用细节构造场景
原文： 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. 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. 文章译文：向下滑动查看更多
点评： 一般情况下，我们可以把文书分为Growth和Identity两类，前者通过事件、经历来呈现自己在某一时刻的成长，而后者则通过特定的个人线索将自己的过去、现在和未来串起来，展现是什么确立了自己的身份。而这篇文章显然属于identity类，作者是用Barnes and Noble书店串起了自己对接受教育及学习知识这一机会的珍惜与热情。 本文第一亮点在于调动五感的描写，从红木双开门（视觉），到进入书店后的咖啡香、书香（嗅觉），再到漂浮的音乐声及广播声（听觉），作者生动地描绘出了他对书店环境的熟悉、从中体会到的愉悦感，也为这个场景增添了质感。我们在进行场景描绘的时候，一定要注意细节，很多时候，我们对某地某事的情感正是通过这些侧面描写才能精准、有效地传达出来的。 其次，文章通过书店体验串起了作者对community和legacy的认识。写与书店常客的相识相知与相互铭记，将和家人去书店这件事情拓展为结实和凝聚读书爱好者community这件事情；而结尾引入爷爷曾在艰苦的条件下为爸爸创造读书的机会，也将简单的中产家庭活动延申到了一个更为多元、具有传承意义的语境中。2. 主题：光学理论与好奇心 关键词：将对学术知识的反思带入生活，展现学习能力
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. 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. 文章译文：向下滑动查看更多
点评： 这也是一篇非常值得学习的“理论性”文章，我们经常看到学生会将他们在任一科目中学习到的小知识运用到对生活的理解之中，这类知识尽管看上去是专业的，但能够从日常经验中得到普遍的回应——它成为了学生理解世界的一种注解。 我们看到在这篇文章里，作者先毫不吝啬地用两段文字解说不同人眼中的颜色可能是不同的，因此引出来，即使是在基本科学中，我们也会带有自己的视角，那么就不存在所谓完全客观的世界。这段娓娓道来的语言把作者的世界观先铺了出来，我们尤其可以学习她是如何用简单、清晰易懂的事例去说明她要阐述的科学知识的。 接着，作者代入了自己的两段个人经验。在这里，“知识”即为“颜色”，它带有不同的角度，不同的人会有不同的解读，但正是通过知识，人们可以尝试站在他者的立场上，理解世界里丰富的角色。整体而言，这是一篇注重展现作者反思性的文章——通过生活智慧和对个人经验的思考，作者展示出了自己的好奇心、理解力和进一步与世界产生连接的意愿。3. 主题：剪去头发，我重新理解了自己是谁 关键词：宗教影响、身份探索与个人叙事
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. 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. 文章译文：向下滑动查看更多
点评： 这篇注重表现作者成长的文章处理了一个尤为艰难的议题：如何理解自己与文化传统的议题。与我们常常接触到的二极想法（要么拥抱、要么抵触）相反，西方社会更加鼓励学生在拥抱自己文化传统的基础上，对它保持反思。作者描述了自己身为一个锡克教徒所经历的挣扎，她忠诚地保留传统之下头发的样貌，但愈发感受到头发给她带来的精神上的压力。而在她鼓起勇气剪短之后，又经历了对自己的样貌变得不一样/违背传统的担心。作者非常诚恳、真挚地呈现出了这些细微的心理历程，而没有把自己所受的压力简化——这是令这片文章十分有说服力的重要原因之一。 此外，文章的叙事技巧也是高超的。在文章开头，作者用短句、短段落、“新生”、“Simar 2.0”这样简洁有力的词汇和技巧去体现剪头发这件事情对她的重要性，迅速将读者拉入她的精神变化之中。她的语气坚定，但又没有夸大，通过提供一些真实的情境（因为外表而遭受的误解）来体现个人的坚强和艰难处境，并留下了许多象征的空间。这其实也提示了我们，不是每篇文书中的自己都要进化为无所不能的小战士，有时，承认一些行为带来的代价，承认改变是无法通过一时的行动迅速发生的，更能体现出自己对“什么是真实的”、“我可以如何更好地为改变现状而努力”这些问题的理解。
