Olive Juice

I had to write an essay for a scholarship and what do I write about, food of course! My roommate says my grammar and sentence structure is immensely better when I write about food, who knew. The inspiration for my essay was my lovely boyfriend Joshua. For one of his admissions essays to UT he compared himself to a hot dog. I figured I more resembled an olive though.



When it seems like my life is down in the deepest pits of pre-adulthood catechisms I like to liken myself to an olive.I do this for several reasons: a) olives are the food of the ancient gods and therefore precede all other foods in fame and reputation.b) They are actually a fruit and the ability to pass and apply oneself in multiple faculties, fruit and veggie,is highly respected. Finally,c) I rather like olives. They are a simple food that can change flavours depending on my mood and these various flavour applications I can parallel to my current phase of life. Right now I feel as if I am a plain green olive, perhaps stuffed with a bit of basic red pimento, simply floating in a giant glass jar on some bargain market shelf crammed between the pickles and the relishes. I am just a student stuffed with basic knowledge in the giant mason jar known as the University of Texas. But I have such dreams and hopes of becoming a fancier more learned olive one day. Oh,the visions of being delicately filled with a Stilton blue cheese and spinach puree, or perhaps gourmet multicoloured mustard seeds in a subtle red wine vinegar and minced herbs. Similarly I have these dreams of a student, and perhaps more strange they are food related.I, like the fancy marinated olive, aspire to be great. I plan to learn as much as I can and share all this knowledge with other fledgling olives so that they might become outstanding olives themselves. I am studying and researching to my pimento's limit in order to achieve all that I know I can. I am marinating in all that the University has to offer so that one day I can write about all I know about food, foodways and the cultures surrounding them. Some day I will end up on my own special shelf or perhaps one of those new "olive bars" along with other petite pots of gourmet stuffed olives. We will stand alone, never again to be categorised with the sour pickles and confused relishes. I think this is why I should be considered for a Texas Exes scholarship, although perhaps I should have considered my comparison with a jalapeno or a Rio Grande ruby red grapefruit. But no, I believe myself an olive, destined for greatness; not just another condiment on the world's shelves.