Act IV: "A time you pretended to be something or someone you are not"

There is always that cliché of high school social life: pretending to be someone for someone else, whether it be a clique or a boyfriend or whatever. Freshman year I did, in fact, meet a boy. He was very sporty and athletic—something I am completely not. But it was a boy that was interested in me, and that, I can tell you, was a rarity. So what did I do? Whenever he talked about the Giants or Mets or whatever other sports team, I did my research and tried to keep up with his conversations, making him believe that I liked sports and the same teams as him, just to impress him and keep him interested. This can loosely be compared to The Crucible, as John Proctor admitted to being associated with the Devil, even though he never did anything wrong.

Act III "Write about a time when you were asked to "name names" or implicate others in a problematic situation"

During 6^th grade, prank phone calls were the “in” thing to do. I guess that I was in one of those middle school “cliques” and that was the thing that these cliques did—to the cute guys we were friends with, to each other, to who ever we could find! There was a girl who was, I guess, “kicked out” of our clique and on the last day of school, was our next victim. We were at one of the girls’ house and decided to prank this other girl who was not out with us, as she was not invited. I barely participated in the prank phone call, but was still held accountable, just like Mary Warren in The Crucible. I was called down by my friend’s mom and asked what happened upstairs and I told the truth about what my “friends” had done, like Mary Warren had done when Goody Proctor was charged with witchcraft and what she had told John Proctor about how Abigail and the others were merely pretending that they were under the “witch” and her spells. I had to tell the truth about the matter, and even though some trusts were lost between those “friends” I knew that I had stood up for a girl who did not deserve to be treated that way, like Mary Warren did for Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible.   

Act II "Write about a time when you or someone you know was judged unfairly."

I met one of my best friends freshman year. She was from River Vale and I was from Hillsdale, so she was someone I never met. We both did theatre but I didn’t perceive her as the person I thought she was. Truthfully—and she knows this—I thought she was one of those “too-cool-to-hang-out-with-freshman” girls because she always caught the attention of the upperclassmen. Then, as I got to know her, I realized this wasn’t the truth, and we have been close ever since, because of the fact that I let my judgment down. This relates to The Crucible because at the end of Act II, Mary Warren blamed Abigail for getting Elizabeth charged with witchcraft. Because of the doll that was planted by Abigail, Elizabeth was unfairly judged and the authorities would not listen to her side of the story—or Mary Warren’s at that fact. Everyone has listened to “innocent” Abigail’s claims, while judging the rest of the town unfairly.

Act I: "A time when you were among a group of people who had trouble getting along. . . what were the underlying problems or motivations among them?"

In seventh grade, I was friends with a group of about eight girls who were all different in our own ways. I had my own things going on, they had theirs. All of the sudden, it seemed, that we all just stopped getting along. It wasn’t a coincidence; I do believe that there were a lot of underlying problems—your typical middle school drama. There was one friend who didn’t want to be friends with another girl because they both “liked” the same boy and tried to get his attention desperately! Another friend had a problem with someone else because she wasn’t invited to sit at the table with her friend at her Bat Mitzvah. Some of my friends danced, and at different studios, and there would always be the recital invitation drama, which I, the non-dancer, always had to be the settler. These “problems” and “motivations” were petty looking back on them, but they destroyed friendships and truly showed everyone in my friends group’s true colors. This, however can be heavily compared to the way characters act in the end of Act I of The Crucible, when Putnam and Proctor disagree about their land, which results in their power and influence in the town. Tituba wanted to take the blame off of her, when accused of doing witchcraft in the play, so she blames the most vulnerable people in the village that people easily could blame because of their actions. In a group of people, there can always be underlying problems.