A persuasive and inspiring essay for successful admission to Harvard - 2025

The Development of a Talent: Describe the journey of developing a specific talent, including challenges and triumphs

“I Couldn't Hear the Music”
At thirteen, I couldn’t hear the music.

I mean that literally and metaphorically. My fingers, stubborn and stiff, hovered over the violin strings like they were afraid of the wood. I was the last chair in the second violin section of my middle school orchestra. The conductor had gently told me to “play a little more quietly” during concerts. And the worst part? I agreed with him.

That should’ve been the end. Logically, I should’ve quit. Why didn’t I? Maybe because I’m terrible at letting go of things that don’t love me back. Or maybe — and I don’t say this lightly — because something in that failure was whispering to me. Not in a triumphant, Hollywood kind of way. No, more like an annoying hum that wouldn’t stop. A question I couldn’t ignore: what if I could turn this noise into something?

So I stayed. But I did it my way. I stopped practicing études and started improvising — badly, at first. I remember once looping a G-minor progression until I forgot which planet I was on. In practice, this looked like hours of trial-and-error in the basement, recording layers of scratchy melodies on free software, trying to build something from the detritus of what I wasn’t good at. I wasn’t aiming for Carnegie Hall — just for something that sounded like me.

That’s when I discovered looping pedals. They let me build music in real time — stacking rhythms, harmonies, discord, and surprise. Looping was forgiving. It didn’t care if I missed a note. It let me get weird. Add a whisper. A spoken phrase. A glass of water tipping over. It let me hear what my music could be — not pristine, not classical, but alive.

The irony? I started hearing the music only once I stopped trying to play it “right.”

This frustrates me, honestly. Why does education so often worship precision over expression? I’m not sure. But I know that when I started uploading my loops online, people didn’t comment on how in-tune I was. They commented on how it made them feel. One kid in Jakarta sent me a voice note, saying my piece reminded him of his grandfather’s garden after the rain. That shook me. Because I’d never even seen a monsoon.

Developing this talent was messy. I messed up performances. I forgot to plug in cables. Once, I accidentally looped myself sneezing and didn’t realize until the audience started giggling. I understand how this sounds. But every single one of those mishaps taught me something I couldn’t have learned from a textbook: resilience, flexibility, humor. And maybe most importantly, how to listen — not just to others, but to the texture of a moment. That’s what music is, really. A way of paying attention.

Now, when I compose, it’s not about showing off. It’s about connecting — threading one person’s silence into another’s chaos, stitching together breath and noise until it becomes something almost beautiful. I’ve composed pieces for friends going through breakups. I’ve looped soundscapes for my grandmother as she falls asleep. I’ve played in subways, in cemeteries, in libraries with questionable acoustics. Every performance is different. Every loop collapses and rebuilds.

I don’t claim to be extraordinary. I’m not even sure I’m talented in the traditional sense. What I know is this: I learned to create meaning from dissonance. To let imperfections breathe. To turn technical failure into emotional language.

That, I think, is my real talent. Not violin. Not looping pedals. But the ability to translate struggle into sound.

So here I am. Seventeen. Still recording late at night. Still improvising. Still hearing the music — not because I perfected it, but because I finally stopped trying to be someone else’s idea of a musician.

Harvard asks what we’ve developed. I offer this: a crooked, unpredictable, fiercely personal kind of music — born from silence, shaped by persistence, and forever in flux.

And I’m still listening.