Old Dominion University Undergraduate College Application Essays

I'm sick of myself.

After writing countless drafts of college essays on everything from extreme poverty to playtime in elementary school, I'm sick of the word "I". Sure, I write a column every month, an editorial here and there, and update my...

Baseball has taken over my life. I don’t play it, but the game has imposed itself in a different way. With two brothers who play on two teams each and a father who coaches, I seem to be living, breathing and eating baseball every day of my life.

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The day I moved to Norfolk was fairly typical of Hampton Roads in the summer: hot and humid. I remember that specifically, probably because our air-conditioning hadn’t yet been turned on in our house. That morning, sometime in mid-July, my sister...

This year, my family had a surprising new addition: an eleven year-old Chinese boy.

No, he isn’t a product of an affair one of my parents had at the Number One China Buffet years back, as joked by various friends. After coming to the U.S. in...

My hand is moving with a mind of its own in a stream of creative consciousness. It may as well be a poltergeist. Rough shapes are being formed, abstract blobs that at first have no cohesion, no combined purpose. After time these strange,...

At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, Japanese runner Shizo Kanakuri dropped out midway through the marathon after feeling like he could no longer keep running. He simply took a boat home without telling anyone, and the race officials assumed he had...

After completing an hour of training with the overworked nurses of Johnston-Willis Hospital, I acquainted myself with Holly, a frail ninety year old woman who, along with fighting terminal cancer, was recovering from a stroke that also impaired...