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

A “Fish Out of Water’ Experience: Share a story where your background, identity, interest, or talent made you stand out in a new environment, and what you learned from it

“I spoke the language, but I didn’t speak the world.”

That’s the phrase I kept muttering to myself in the back corner of my first American high school lunchroom, shivering slightly under the relentless chill of the air conditioning. It was Florida-hot outside, but I felt like I’d been dropped into a snow globe: everything was glittering, self-contained, spinning fast, and I was sealed off — observing, not participating.

I grew up in Caracas. The real Caracas, not the one you see in Google Images—no filter, no postcard skyline. At home, I could code a basic app, recite Neruda by heart, and convince a street vendor to sell me mangoes on credit. I felt rooted there, even as the country crumbled around us. We had blackouts more often than birthdays. Water was a privilege, not a given. But I knew how to navigate it. There was rhythm, even in collapse.

Then I moved to the U.S., and suddenly, I was fluent in the language but illiterate in the culture. Kids joked about things I’d never heard of—“APUSH,” “Taco Tuesday,” “Snap scores”—and I smiled like a mirror: reflecting, not understanding. The weirdest part? I didn’t even know what I didn’t know.

In practice, this looked like silence. I stopped raising my hand. Not because I didn’t know the answer, but because I feared I’d pronounce “Worcestershire” wrong again and watch the room collapse in laughter (which did happen—twice). I remember a time in chemistry class when the teacher asked us to explain a basic stoichiometry problem, and though I could have solved it three ways in my head, I just scribbled quietly, pretending to be slow.

That’s what being a “fish out of water” felt like to me: not breathless, but voiceless. Not drowning, but invisible.

But here's the twist—what if a fish can learn to walk?

I started small. I joined the robotics team, not because I wanted to win (though we did), but because machines didn’t care about my accent. I found something quietly thrilling in watching code become motion, theory become torque. One night, while debugging a PID loop at 2 AM in my garage, I realized: This is fluency too. The language of logic. Precision. Cause and effect.

Then came debate. Yes, me—the kid who once avoided eye contact in English class—volunteered to argue in front of strangers. My first round? A disaster. I forgot the word “ubiquitous” and stammered something like “everywhere-ish.” I lost. But the second round, I told a story about my grandmother boiling arepas during a blackout and connected it—somehow—to the policy implications of renewable subsidies. I won.

There’s a strange magic in failure when you’re forced to own it. It teaches you something sterile success never could: who you are when no one’s applauding.

I’m not saying I ever stopped feeling like an outsider. Maybe I never will. Sometimes I still hesitate before speaking, still mistranslate idioms in my head (“kick the bucket” horrified me for weeks). But I’ve learned that standing out isn’t a scar—it’s a signal. A bright flare saying: “This is different. This matters.”

I understand how this sounds. But I don’t mean to romanticize displacement. There’s nothing cute about culture shock. It’s lonely, often humiliating, occasionally infuriating. But it also scrapes away all the easy answers. You’re left with your raw questions, and your raw self. And from that, you build—not a new identity, but a fuller one.

Harvard asks for thinkers, not mimics. Creators, not just achievers. People who can cross disciplines—and oceans—and still keep their curiosity intact. I may not have roots here, but I’ve grown a spine. And hands that build. And a voice that trembles, yes—but still speaks.

I don’t always belong. But maybe that’s the point.

Because belonging isn’t about fitting into someone else’s mold.

It’s about learning how to shape your own.