<p>I'm submitting the optional creative essay. Its about designing and making a van de graaff generator on my own in 10th grade. Do you think this is an okay topic or am I just bloating up a small thing?</p>
<p>It doesn't seem like it could <em>hurt</em> you in any way, so I'd say why not.</p>
<p>Van de graaf?! Van de graaf?!!</p>
<p>They're really cool- so simple, yet so powerful. I have like an irrational fear of them because of a bad childhood experience in a science museum as a little child. And it wasn't just one experience. I hopped on the thing and started getting shocked and shocked and I remember looking down and seeing this enourmous blue bolt hit me in the foot. It felt like someone just kicked me. Then every door knob I touched for the rest of the night shocked me.</p>
<p>Haha, but I'm over it now. My physics teacher has an unnatural attraction to them though. He like shocks himself in the eye and tongue and stuff, right in class too.</p>
<p>mognoose, ur teacher is crazy...</p>
<p>is it mognoose or mongoose?</p>
<p>Well, it's mognoose. Yes, I know, it's spelled wrong, but it's for a reason. In one game I used to enjoy playing online, the default name for a character was "mongoose" and many servers just auto booted anyone with that name because they knew the person was new and hadn't bothered to change their name.</p>
<p>And then, well, I just changed one letter, and voila, a new online moniker. I kinda like the name too. Mognoose... mognoose...</p>
<p>So I wrote the optional essay topic about making a control panel for my FIRST team's robot. Sounds impressive, but the whole point of the essay was how I had no clue what I was doing. Considering I have no idea how to make a van de graaf generator, I'd say go for it! Just make sure the essay is insightful and engaging. The point isn't really what you write about, it's what the essay actually TELLS the person reading it.</p>
<p>Van de graaf (however you spell it) is not something that is too hard to make. HOWEVER, if you can tell something about YOU, not the electric shocker, yes go for it. (I can guarantee you people at MIT know more about the generator and any of us here.)</p>
<p>ha, and I was thinking of impressing them with my sappy inventions. Not at all impressive, but it was okay, I guess : 3.</p>
<p>Mognoose is a cool name.</p>
<p>Thanks man.. er, girl.</p>
<p>I think the important part is "thanks".</p>
<p>For my "create" essay, I wrote about some music I had written.</p>
<p>in my completely optional essay i talked about how i love philosophy and then i just had an extra page outlining the research that ive done over four years with an abstract of a paper i published.</p>
<p>Thanks people. Do you think the purpose of the create essay is to let the folks at mit know a little bit more about yourself or to highlight your creativity/passion</p>
<p>my create essay, i talked about the R/C planes i've built so far, highlighting the Aerial Photography (plane + modified digital camera). ~300 words.</p>
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Do you think the purpose of the create essay is to let the folks at mit know a little bit more about yourself or to highlight your creativity/passion
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<p>Yes. :)</p>
<p>A little less facetiously, I think it's really both.</p>
<p>I wrote about my obsession with Calvin and Hobbes? Was that a mistake? I didn't really want to write about math again...</p>
<p>Definitely not. There are no right answers to the essays -- they just want to know who you are and what you're psyched about.</p>
<p>Can the optional essay hurt you?</p>
<p>i don't see how an essay can hurt you, unless the grammar's really off, or if you copied someone else's..</p>