College Essay
From the moment I watched sunlight dance across desiccated butterfly wings, I wanted to be an artist like Mr. Zhu. He was, and remains, one of the few living practitioners of die hua, an ancient Chinese art that transforms the wings of naturally deceased butterflies into intricate collage. He was also my fourth-grade biology teacher, and when he decided to try sharing his passion as part of an after-school program, I was one of the only students who stayed.
Week after week, I sat in the back of his classroom, learning to cut the fragile wings without tearing them, to arrange different species so their unique iridescence caught the light just so. Though my earliest attempts — simple geometric patterns — were far cries from the stunning interpretations of classical Chinese art that Mr. Zhu was quietly completing at his desk, he hung both of our efforts on the wall just the same, and I could spend hours simply moving side to side, watching how my orientation towards the work appeared to change its very nature.
By fifth grade, I was visiting Mr. Zhu’s studio after school. By middle school, I was spending much of each summer in the mountains outside of Shanghai alongside him, observing the butterflies in their natural habitats. As my own abilities grew, with shapes giving way to monthslong recreations of Van Gogh and Picasso, so too did my understanding of the Daoist ideas foundational to die hua: nothing is fixed, beauty is temporary, and everything is interconnected.
And then, I was forced to make a choice: boarding school in the U.S., with all the unknown opportunities it promised, or my present-day passion for die hua. As I boarded the plane to Massachusetts, I already found myself grieving — not only for the loss of the craft, but also the quiet companionship of my teacher.
Yet, as I devoted myself to finding new activities to fill the hours once devoted to butterfly art, I realized die hua had left me with more than a skill; it had given me a way of seeing. Within math, for example, I saw how the patterns within eigenvalues or matrices only reveal themselves after patient observation, delighting in the moments when changing a single assumption causes an equation to unfold in new ways. Similarly, within journalism, I saw how words offer their own kind of elegant geometry, and I approached the reporting of stories like butterfly wings, cutting and arranging information until meaning appeared. In everything, though, I’ve seen and sought opportunities to lead, like captaining the Math Team and serving as Chief Editor for DNA-MX, my school’s science journal. Whether steadying the nerves of a younger student ahead of the Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament or helping a newer writer go even deeper into a story they love, I see the debt of mentorship I owe to Mr. Zhu, seeking to repay it one conversation at a time.
Every summer, I return to Shanghai for a few weeks, and I look forward to the days I spend with my former teacher, working in his studio or helping him showcase his work around the city. Increasingly, our conversations have been about my own future, and somewhat ironically, he’s insistent that I don’t pursue art full-time, promising that “there’ll be time for it later.” Yet, in a way, I think I already am. The biggest lesson I’ve taken from die hua isn’t about arranging butterfly wings; it’s about finding art in everything I do.
“It’s not about what the work is today,” Mr. Zhu once told me, kneeling beside my table in his classroom.
“It’s about what the work can be.” As I imagine college and beyond, it’s this vision I carry with me: a life built like a collage, each fragment carefully chosen, its beauty revealed by the shifting light.