A FAULTY AND FLAWLESS POWER b y I o C a r p i s o Last November, EducationUSA launched an essay contest for highschoolers as a simulation of actual college application essays.
Editor-in-Chief Io Carpiso ranked Top 5 with her essay that answered the prompt "What's your college superpower?"
Later in life, I started developing a power a bit like [hammerspaces].
In cartoons, anything is fair game as long as it’s within the scope of imagination, regardless of the suspension of reality or the thinning of sensibility. Magical warrior-princesses appearing in the shoes of schoolgirls. Black holes ripped into the background to make a new exit. Cats and mice in a violent feud, pulling hammers, saws, and drills from voids just at the area of their backs— fittingly, those voids “hammerspaces.”
Later in life, I started developing a power a bit like it. Instead of household items or power tools, I found that my void held a different kind of thing. I don't always get the thing I need, but once they’re wormed themselves into my hand, they're unmovable and nailed into place.
One of my most favorite examples of this was for an English final in ninth grade. We were sat down, the thirty of us, one tile apart, and told to write down a script for a stage adaptation of chapters from Mary Shelley’s
Groans erupted around me, but as I read Chapters 18-20,I felt a jitter of excitement rather than anxiety. I love a good writing challenge because anything goes within the scope of imagination, logic, and wit.
It was just what I needed, and it was something I had wanted. I had wanted to make something good, memorable, and different. It’s all I ever want to do.
I reached to the void just at my back, and on my test paper unfolded a seamless one-act play: in a jail cell, a pitiful, tormented
Frankenstein recounts his two-years plight, his regrets, and his fears in a handful of breaths. Is that a body on his prison bed? He stammers about making a horrific mistake. He tears the blanket away… there’s nothing there! Suddenly, thunder roars in the background, and a monstrous face appears at the window— It roars, in chorus with Victor’s howl: “He said… I shall be with you on your wedding night!
Victor whispers that yes, he is a murderer. He was just charged with the wrong crime. Lightning crashes onto the stage. Then darkness.
It was a roar to read when I finished writing it. It was just what I needed, and it was something I had wanted. I had wanted to do.
My power had developed in me for ages, just waiting to be used. That is, on the better days. There are some days when I don’t feel the rush of enthusiasm when I reach out to that area of my back, which at times feel cold and empty. Some days, what I pull out from my hammerspace misses the spots I was meant to aim for, like getting a rusty screwdriver when you need to remove some bent nails.
For all it's worth, though, it's okay. I understand that not all things I'll find in there will be amazing, polished, or well-loved.
Even then, I appreciate the drawings, the essays, and the videos I find in my magic void anyway. Why? Because even if they aren’t the perfect, pleasant, pleasing things I need, they are mine.
My superpower isn't just making things appear from thin air. It’s making things that are patently me. Things that are colored with what I am and what I love. It’s a power I want to refine, be it in college or workshops or furnaces. It’s like any other tool the toons on TV pull from thin air. Instead of lamps and axes and hammers, though, I’m pulling out dreams and words and drawings. And like a sword, it is something itching to be tempered.