<p>This is my Indiana SSA Essay. I'll include the prompt.</p>
<p>Analytical Essay: The scholarship review committee considers this additional analytical essay to be very important and places special emphasis on your choice of topic, writing style, research ability, critical thinking skills and objectivity. Please research and write an original essay of approximately 600 words on a topic of special interest or concern to you about which thoughtful people could disagree. We encourage you to choose a topic which reflects your own intellectual interests. Consider a topic that has not been explored in your high school courses, and please do not recycle essays or papers you have written for class. Your thesis should be supported with persu.,asive and concrete evidence, and you should cite all sources. We have provided a few suggestions below, but these need not limit your choice or your creativity. Possible topics might include:
An ethical, political, economic, philosophical, scientific or social issue or creative work (such as a novel, film, poem, scientific theory, biography, painting, sculpture) that has had a significant impact on the world at some point in time.
A recent development (issue) in your community, country, or the world, about which there has been controversy.
An issue currently being debated in a field you are interested in.</p>
<p>Last Tuesday, a man got on a subway to get home from work. He bumped by several large men and grabbed a handhold as the subway took off. His hands rattled as the subway bumped sped to its destination. After five minutes, the subway slowed to a stop. The man pushed his way out of the subway, his shoulders warmed as others brushed by side. The man arrived at his house, fumbled with the keys, and entered through the wooden door. He lived alone with no wife or kids. The man laid in his bed, thinking of his day. He got a strange thought, thinking of the world that he stepped out into. In a world of seven billion people, he knew less than one percent of that total. He walked the streets everyday, connecting and talking to others, his presence becoming part of the identity of that day, but he could not help feeling alone. As he thought further, he wondered a human thought that is all too familiar: will he be remembered?<br>
This man is not unique in wondering this question. Everyday millions of people dream of being recognized and influencing the world. The modern day celebrity has become the face power and prestige. Long after they die, they will be remembered and cherished. These ordinary people look up at this face and wish that it was their own. It seems that nobody is willing to step outside of the tide and challenge this belief of being recognized. The simple truth of the matter is that while people try so hard for others to love them, they have not learned to love themselves.
Just last month, a new movie came out to much acclaim. The movie was called “Birdman”. Birdman was a low-budget film starring Michael Keaton, an aging male actor remembered for a series of comic-book movies he made twenty years ago. The movie told a story of Keaton’s character Riggan Thomson. Riggan is a washed up hollywood star who is best known for playing Birdman, a superhero in a comic-book film adaptation. Twenty years have passed since his last Birdman movie, and Riggan is fighting to stay relevant. Any similarities between Michael Keaton and his character Riggan are purely intentional. Riggan’s subconscious demonizes his past mistakes, always stabbing him with the simple fact that he would still be famous if he stayed in his role of Birdman. Riggan wants to make something that feels important, so he decides to direct and star in a Broadway play he wrote, an adaptation of Raymond Carver’s story “What It Means When We Talk About Love”. “Birdman” takes jabs at the played-out Hollywood story arcs and the big budget comic-book films, but the film’s most honest moments come between Riggan and his daughter. She tells him that the world has forgotten him and that he does not matter, but also that this should not be important to him. She asks him who he truly is and what he hopes to achieve. Behind Riggan’s desire to earn his place, he has forgotten to please the only person that should matter to him: himself.<br>
The world is full of Riggans; people who dream of being remembered and cherished. It’s easy to get lost amongst a world of instant connectivity and thousands of facebook friends. People who live their lives to please others, end up not being able to please themselves. At the end of Birdman, Riggan tried to kill himself onstage after realizing this truth. Our demons inside our head are not always there, they come from the lives that we live every single day. Feelings of self-doubt and depreciation would not happen if people loved themselves. A mind full of love and confidence overshadows any amount of accolades and praise from a world full of aspiring legacies. </p>