Oh girl, a college application essay? then you KNOW i am all over this.
these are important; we have to get them right. we have to work for hours and days and weeks, so let us get started.
first of all, the technical is EXTREMELY important in applications, so i'll give examples of nitpicking for you to be aware of in your second draft.
In 1954 a man by the name of J.R.R. Tolkien published a book he titled The Fellowship of the Ring, the first of the trilogy Lord of the Rings.
In 1954, a man by the name of J.R.R. Tolkein published a book he titled The Fellowship of the Ring, the first in the trilogy Lord of the Rings.
though as jack said, volume would be better.
but as i say, this is a completely completely unnecessary sentence. the people who read your application are old and have probably heard a lot of things in popular culture, especially since lord of the rings was around before the movies, the movies were extremely popular, and the recent release of the hobbit has brought them all back into popular memory. you DO NOT NEED to introduce the concept of lotr to your application reader, and even if you want to give them base information, the name of the author, laid out in such a clunky way, is ONLY eating up your word limit. omg, please please please look for every way you can condense, so you can fit more words of value in!
Sometimes, one’s reasons, reasons we cannot always see, are often better than the outcome they create.
learn to use m-dashes! they're awesome: sometimes, one's reasons -- reasons we cannot always see -- are better than the outcome they create.
(hey, you said sometimes, but then you said often; keep an eye on that! you can only have one temporal moderator at a time!)
now now now, i am done with nitpicks and you need to seriously rehaul this. like i said, boromir and lotr need far less introduction, which means you can cut your "i should have told you that the ring was really powerful" that comes close to the end, too. in fact, i am going to quote here all that i think is necessary:
He is the epitome of ‘man’ in Middle Earth. He’s impatient, selfish, and quick to anger. Boromir is the one of the first characters in the trilogy to fall under the Ring’s enchantment. He attacks the protagonist, Frodo (+ something about how this is bad 'cause frodo's innocent) ... {he} demonstrates humility and honor towards the end of his life. He attempts to save two other Hobbits that accompanied Frodo, sacrificing himself so they might be saved. With his dying breath, he shows great humility by apologizing for attacking Frodo and dies an honorable man. ... could not a man here on Earth, in reality, make a horrendous mistake and redeem himself? I think he could.
and NOW you need to show /yourself/. it's a college essay, and the reason they want to read a college essay is to learn about YOU, not about what you call boromir characters (which by the way, you shouldn't claim to have named, 'cause lots of people study characters and tropes and define their actions by labels and stuff, so if you want to get personal about how you named them, instead describe how you feel about them).
the main point is, how has this changed you, and how does that make you better equipped to live in the world. you get into it a little: you try to see past people's mistakes, and you give them the benefit of the doubt. that's good, but it's weak. how has boromir changed your world view? when did you first realize it? tell an anecdote about yourself, now, to show why you chose this topic and what it reveals about you as a person.
good luck. put up second and third drafts. let me know if you have questions.
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