Teen's Harvard admissions essay goes viral on TikTok

Teen's Harvard admissions essay goes viral on TikTok
A Massachusetts high school senior who was earned herself a highly sought-after spot at Harvard University has now also earned viral fame after publicly sharing the heart-rending college admissions essay she wrote about the death of her mother.
In what began seemingly as a focused essay on grammar, Abigail Mack, 18, detailed in her Common App essay why she hates the letter 'S', before explaining that, since she lost her mother to cancer, the 'S' in 'parents' has haunted her.
But it also motivated her to keep busy, filling her schedule with AP classes and extracurricular activities — and now, thanks to her stellar record and a well-written essay, she's headed to Harvard in the fall.
Abigail read her essay in a series of TikTok videos which have gone viral, with the first part racking up 18 million views. 'I hate the letter "S,"' Abigail wrote. 'Of the 164,777 words with "S," I only grapple with one. To condemn an entire letter because of its use .0006 percent of the time sounds statistically absurd, but that one case changed 100 percent of my life.
'I used to have two parents, but now I have one, and the "S" in "parents" isn't going anywhere.
'"S" follows me. I can't get through a day without being reminded that while my friends went out to dinner with their parents, I ate with my parent.
'As I write this essay, there is a blue line under the word "parent" telling me to check my grammar; even Grammarly assumes that I should have parents, but cancer doesn't listen to edit suggestions.
'I won't claim that my situation is as unique as one in 164,777, but it is still an exception to the rule — an outlier. The world isn't meant for this special case,' she wrote.
'The world wouldn't abandon "S" because of me, so I tried to abandon "S." I could get away from "S" if I stayed busy; you can't have dinner with your "parent" (Thanks again Grammarly) if you're too busy to have family dinner. Any spare time that I had, I filled. I became known as "the busy kid" — the one that everyone always asks, "How do you have time?"'
She packed her schedule with morning meetings, classes, after school meetings, volleyball practice, dance class, rehearsal in Boston, and homework.
She explained: 'I couldn't fill the loss that "S" left in my life, but I could at least make sure I didn't have to think about it. There were so many things in my life I couldn't control, so I controlled what I could — my schedule.
'I never succumbed to the stress of potentially overcommitting. I thrived.'
It became challenging to juggle all of her commitments, but she soon found a 'rhythm.'
'But rhythm wasn't what I wanted,' she said. 'Rhythm may not have an "S," but "S" sure liked to come by when I was idle. So, I added another ball, and another, and another. Soon I noticed that the same "color" balls kept falling into my hands — theater, academics, politics.