I sat at a patio table, surrounded by my closest friends. The summer sun shined down on me as I recounted for them the time my English teacher held a chair up to my face, asking me to think about purpose. Laughing, a friend countered with his story of an underwater robotics experiment gone awry, and the water he had to mop up from around the classroom. We had to pause to catch our breath from laughter. Junior year had...

Full essay (only went to Yale)

In fourth grade, my chorus teacher recorded one of our concerts and showed it to the class. Later that day, it was the talk of the playground that I was in the corner of the screen, “making funny faces.” That experience is my earliest memory of my moderately severe facial tic. Once aware of my tic, I struggled to control it. For minutes, hours, even days at a time, the tic would completely slip my mind: I wouldn’t twitch...