The opening line is
"When my friend put his arms around his father, I would glance at mine. There was an expression of disgust on his face that only family insiders could recognize. "
The father-son dynamics in the military family is not the core theme of the essay. But I used a relationship dynamic in the opening line to make a larger point about veterans and how challenging it is to offer help for those who are suffering from severe PTSD. The applicant, a technologist working on an App to measure biomarkers with haptic feedback, captures the motivation for measuring non-verbal cues in the App with the opening line. Because veterans try to overcome suffering by bottling the stressors down, biomarkers are an ingenious way to measure stress.
The opening line also builds the story to a moment when the applicant's father reveals a horrific truth about his war experience.
The line serves two purposes - to address a larger problem among the veteran community and to reiterate the point that the percentage suffering from PTSD is far higher than the 9-20% quoted in official documents. The second half of the essay is a solution narrative that the applicant plans to realize with the support of GSB.
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