<p>enderkin, it's the concept of jeong, right?</p>
<p>For a while there you had me thinking the bench had something to do with Pythagoras... yeah I know. :P</p>
<p>yep! (5/5 bonuuusss super-american roboto-cowboy finish!)</p>
<p>the creepy thing was, i wrote this essay without intending to use jeong. only when i looked it up did i realize that my story EMBODIED the word. very strange. it was almost like it was destined to be like that...</p>
<p>Hmm... I'm afraid my essay sucks compared to everyone else's. Oh, well... nothing more than I expected :-)</p>
<p>I chose to choose a picture and explore what it wanted...</p>
<p>The deafening sounds of mortar rounds reverberating through the streets of Baghdad are overpowering the yells, screams and cries of the victims of those very mortars. The chants and celebratory gunfire emitted from the Hezbollah militants are more thunderous than the pleas for reconciliation between the Arabs and Israelis. The victims in Darfur are too dehydrated to utter hope for an end to the genocide in their country. All across the world love is being silenced by hate, hope is being gagged by greed and peace is being suffocated by anger. All of these fires of the world fires of hate, fires of greed, fires of anger are being fueled by a source more prevalent than crude oil and more flammable than gasoline. That seemingly omnipresent fuel that is tearing our world apart is known, understood and realized; it is ignorance. </p>
<p>Just as a fire can be extinguished, ignorance can be overcome. I believe there are actions, thoughts and hopes that serve as an arsenal in the battle against ignorance; many of them are represented by this one thing that captures the spirit, will and devotion necessary to battle the anguish ravishing through the planet. That one thing that one thing that can arm us against the plight of the ignorant is shown in a simple photograph that I brought home from my summer in China. That picture illustrates the idea of understanding, the idea of cross-cultural exposure, the idea of peace. It shows how people of different faiths, different backgrounds and different ideologies can still live peacefully with one another. It illustrates how we can overcome ignorance and thereby overcome anger, hate and greed. </p>
<p>Eight people are in this picture, my chosen weapon in the war of the world. I am standing with my host family amidst the typical Beijing crowds near Tiananmen Square. It is a photograph of brothers smiling at their sisters, cousins standing with their aunts and uncles, and husbands holding their wives hands. I am standing next to my uncle as a nephew and embracing my brother as a brother would. It is a picture of happiness, of the feeling that pervades so many lives of so many families. We are standing closely, all smiling, all embracing the person nearest us. The picture is simple: a temporary family caught together in the center of Beijing. </p>
<p>The picture was simply meant to be stored somewhere and found only to cure a case of nostalgia. It is, however, something more. It is a picture of a young student with his friends, not a picture of just a student and his host family. It is a picture of a gracious guest and the woman who insisted that he eat breakfast for his health, not a picture of an American patriot and a Peoples Liberation Army nurse. It is a picture of two Black Eyed Peas (the band) fans, not a picture of a capitalist and a communist. It is a picture of the atomic bomb of the fight against ignorance; it is a picture of friendship across borders, of understanding between cultures. </p>
<p>Two fundamentally different cultures are represented in the picture, yet there we are all smiling, all happy. Our governments cherish different things, we worship different gods and believe in different causes. We eat different foods, wear different clothes and have different traditions, yet we are all standing by each other and embracing one another. That is the important thing: despite so many differences, we still embrace one another. Even though my host brother and I disagreed on the fate of Taiwan, we embrace each other. Even though I fear Chinas military build up, I embrace my host father who was a physicist for the Chinese military. Even though we are so different, we still embrace one another. </p>
<p>We are not the only elements in this picture, however. In the background stands a source of irony, a tangible sign of the differences between our nations. The image of Tiananmen Square, a dark reminder of the suppression of freedom in China, could be interpreted as a challenge against the very ideas that I imbue the picture with. It does not, however, detract from the idea that I have developed; it strengthens it. The presence of Tiananmen Square simply illustrates that we acknowledge that we are of different political and social beliefs and accept it. It strengthens the power of our weapon of understanding and acceptance. Despite its presence, despite the standing proof of our differences, we are still together, still embracing one another, still friends. </p>
<p>The idea of cross-cultural and cross-national contact and understanding is the very weapon that can be used against ignorance, as exhibited by this picture. This picture, this AK-47 in the fight against ignorance, is not just a picture of my host family and me. It is bigger than that, bigger than its immediate purpose and bigger than any material thing. The idea that it embodies is alive; the picture now has a life, a will, a purpose, a goal. It exists, along with so many other weapons, to expand the fight against ignorance and the fight against hate, greed and anger. It wants to and does go beyond its immediate appearance and create more pictures of understanding, more pictures of friends from different backgrounds. It wants to be a soldier in the war against ignorance.</p>
<p>The picture and the idea it presents wants to witness the Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish inhabitants of Iraq praying in the same mosque, walking on the same streets and eating in the same restaurants. It wants to see those three sects understand and embrace the others differences. It longs to see the Shia drop their rifles in order to shake the hand of their Sunni counterpart. It fights to see Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish children playing soccer together in the streets of a peaceful nation.</p>
<p>The picture wants to end the suffering in Darfur. It wants the victims and the combatants alike to share a table in a feast of friendship, to acknowledge each others worth and potential and to lock arms in the battle for prosperity. It wants to put and end to the life of the pictures coming out of Darfur that exhibit the pain and suffering of so many people in that region. It wants to replace those pictures with images of friendship, understanding and respect.</p>
<p>The picture wants an agreement between the Israelis and the Arabs, a treaty of friendship between the two. It wants the Arabs to recognize the Israelis as different, but equal. It wants followers of different faiths to be able to worship together in the holy sites that they share; it wants Muslims, Jews and Christians alike to be able to bow and pray to their own God, in their own temples, with no fear. It wants peace and understanding in a region so ravished by the lack thereof.</p>
<p>wow. my essay is so ... sub-parr compared to any of these.</p>
<p>Wow! These essays are absolutely fabulous! I'm not so sad now that I've been rejected...knowing that some really awesome kids have gotten in!! Congrats everyone.</p>
<p>good work, i really like it</p>
<p>Dear Bill<em>h</em>pike,</p>
<p>The problem with your essay is that it follows an echoed discourse and reaches a colorless conclusion. The piece reveals nothing about your personal character or why you might be an adept Chicago student. It sparingly underlines you interest in philosopher, yes, but truth be told this could have been produced by any amatuer philosopher (myself included). In short, the writing is missing the keystone of any good college entry essay--a thread of your soul sewn into the paragraphs.</p>
<p>Wishing you the Best,
Ryan</p>
<p>Here's my essay, it's more traditional than the others on this thread...but I'm proud of it :)</p>
<p>Chicago Professor W. J.T. Mitchell entitled his 2005 book What Do Pictures Want? Describe a picture and explore what it wants.</p>
<p>It's late afternoon as the sun moves west across the autumn sky. The grass of the well manicured lawn has begun to yellow with the chill of the season and solitary leaves, crinkled and browned, drift in the light breeze. A stand of green pine trees across the lane gives a false impression of summer, but these trees never change with the seasons and never age, unlike both the mutable grass and humans on the other side of the road. A young boy, aged three just that day, races across the scene towards his father, raising his arm to point at some distant object. The father gazes at his son with a look of curiosity, unaware of the distant wonder that has caught the attention of his child, who until a moment before had been so determined to reach him. The father steps forward, slightly extending an arm to recapture his child's attention. Somewhere behind the boy a shutter snaps and this moment in time is captured forever... </p>
<p>Fourteen years have come and gone and the singular legacy of that moment is a small photograph, blurry and yellowing with age. Gingerly grasping the picture, my fingers methodically trace its figures: the child that I was, and the man that was my father. Their distant voices call to me from the picture, telling me their secrets and begging the future of me. Staring at the photograph I cannot help but believe the age old superstition that a developing photograph steals its subject's soulscapturing and reflecting their aspirations, emotions and desires. But what do the miniature figures of persons trapped in this instant desire? They want to remind me of their moment. They seek to inspire me. But most of all, they desire to experience the lives that were never theirs to live. </p>
<p>The photograph, taken unbeknownst to me that October third, 1993 serves as a stoic reminder of my past. My three-year-old self, so exuberant at the presence of his father and filled with the wonder and mysteries of life would hardly recognize me, now estranged from the man to whom he runs, a teenager lost in the process of growing into an adult. That three-year-old does not know that his father will move across the country in a mere nine years, leaving him with his mother and to his own devices; creating a gap that the two of them will continually struggle to bridge. No, neither the boy in the photograph nor his frozen father have any way of knowing the future as I know it, or even the past for that matter, since their existence is limited to that one eternal moment in time. But the figures in the photograph do know their own moment; they know it in infinite detail: every blade of grass, every shadow, every nuance of emotion that existed at that second between the boy and his father it is all they can know. They entreat me not to forget them, not to forget the only moment of mine that they can ever have. The boy in the photograph silently reminds me of the relationship with my father, long broken, and begs me to remember it well, so that even if it never exists again, it will remain in my heart forever, in more than the form of a blurry, yellowing photograph. </p>
<p>However, the motives of the photograph are not quite so simple. The picture seeks not only to remind, but also to inspire me to bridge the gap with my father by reminding me of the unrelenting, unwavering love between a father and a son. In the world of the photograph, the father and the son exist alone, with nothing but their love for each other. The photograph could be ripped in half to separate son from father forever, but to do so would be to rip apart the soul of the photograph itself. What the photograph wants me to realize is that however estranged from my father I may become, to completely tear apart our relationship would be to rip my soul in two. The boy and his father want to recreate their own reality in the present by moving me to an emotional reconciliation with my father. Perhaps they fear that the love they hold forever may be more transient in the world of the animate where time cannot freeze and where hearts cannot stay. </p>
<p>But most of all, these figures, these miniature ghosts of my past, seek just that...the world of the living... animation. The boy in the photo, my three-year-old self frozen in time, wants nothing more than to complete his race across the lawn to his father, to show by example what he desires for me to do. Yet despite all of his desires, the child in the photograph is caught for eternity in mid-stride, unable to move so much as a centimeter, his immutable existence forcing him to endure a physical separation that mirrors the emotional separation between my father and me in the world of the living. The father too is destined to spend eternity waiting for his son. Is this the same way that my father awaits my forgiveness? The irony of the photograph is that while I have moved on with my life, unable to even recollect this moment, it is the only instant in which the boy and his father will ever live. </p>
<p>Perhaps my father has spent the last five years waiting for me to forsake whatever it is I have been running after and instead run back to him, like the boy in the photograph. Perhaps I will. But until that time all that remains is an aged, unfocused picture of a young boy and his father, a pair so estranged from my current self that I cannot bring myself to refer to him as "I". Until then all I have is a picture that wants me to remember its moment, a picture that seeks to inspire me to run again to my father like I did so long ago, a picture that wants more than anything to animate and reunite a son and father, physically and then emotionally separated for too long.</p>
<p>My son was accepted. Here is his "What do Pictures Want" essay. (He only posts on LetsRun, but he said I could post his essay.)</p>
<p>Like so much of our world, pictures are human creations. Nowadays they pervade every aspect of life. We snap them with cell phones, construct them digitally, and draw them with lasers. Styles range from the ultra-detailed to the super-abstract, yet all the while they remain faithful to the deepest yearnings of their creators. The roots of human picture drawing can be traced back to the cave paintings of the Paleolithic era, and the simple coals and pigments befitting of a stone age. While the methods of picture creation have been reinvented time and time again, the basic purposes of the designers have remained unaltered.</p>
<p>My picture doesnt hang in any museum, and its quality is more befitting of a vandalized train car than a gallery. It lies within the Italian Alps, near Valcamonica, and makes use of bare rock in place of canvas or fresco. The picture itself is a simple rock carving. A stick figure-like man seen from the side turns to face the viewer with a wave of his free hand. With his other hand, he grasps the haunch of an animal with which he is mating. This uncomplicated depiction portrays the desires of its artist with clarity. Whoever created it obviously wanted sex, and likely also had some design on the social gains he would achieve through the carrying out and depiction of this exploit. The cheerful wave indicates that humor was another motivation behind the picture.</p>
<p>When people contemplate great art, they often turn to intricate, symbolic works that capture high-minded emotions such as the desire for freedom, or that celebrate the richness of the human form. Art, and pictures by extension, make their appeals to civilized thought and refined cultural identity. Just beneath this thin intellectual veneer, however, lies a vast and simple world defined by our most basic wants and instincts. Our cavemans reasons for drawing himself did not involve any profound spirituality or reverence to beauty. Instead, we meet someone who just wanted to have fun. </p>
<p>Prehistoric peoples are often depicted as joyless wanderers caring only for their own survival. We talk about their caves, their spearheads, and the pictures of their prey, but we neglect to consider their humanity. Every school in our country that has a large teenage population plays host to numerous lewd drawings and epithets. Open any old textbook; this art is everywhere. Evidently, the teenagers of the Paleolithic were no different. Their hormones were out of control, and they wanted to be cool. This is vividly displayed in the Valcamonica petroglyph. One can imagine a young group of proto-Italians giggling as they made it and a few of the tribal elders shaking their heads in disgust.</p>
<p>Art doesnt really want anything. It is an expression of human emotion and an instrument of creativity. Artists such as Michelangelo and Van Gogh represent the apex of artistic achievement, but anyone can doodle or scratch an image that is meaningful to him. The universal ability to doodle is what unites the caveman with modern day amateur artists everywhere. People want sex, status, food and good humor, and our Valcamonican artist was certainly familiar with the sex and humor aspects of the human condition.</p>
<p>Madonna. The moniker for over a millennium belonged exclusively to the Virgin Mary, and was made simultaneously
human and superhuman to the illiterate Christian masses of worshippers by innumerable altarpieces, panel paintings,
icons, statuettes, medallions, oils, and tapestries (along with the occasional sighting), with every cast of flesh and cast
of expression, her personage radiating humility and mercy and generosity and divine inspiration and the ultimate
motherhood that buoyed the very power of the image to new heights. The name Madonna has come to be used
mostly for visual representations of the mother of Christ - she may be the most painted and sculpted woman in
history. Madonna and Child, the Coronation of the Virgin, the Virgin and Child with St. Anne, the Pieta, the
Assumption, the Annunciation, the Nativity. The Black Madonna of Czestochowa, Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of
Lourdes, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of Peace.
In the American “Age of Irony” starting in 1980, when revolutionary changes became commonplace (and accepted
by more of the population), the name Madonna became a name for two. It was bestowed upon a mortal woman in
Michigan in 1958, who made herself electronically divine through images - like the process bestowed upon the Virgin
Mary, but self-conscious, ravenously calculated. Perhaps, Ms. Ciccone's given name inspired her.
Madonna’s mercurial rise to power in autumn 1984, at the peak of the dizzying excesses and paradoxes of the
Reagan Era, came as the result of an interconnected iconography of slogans frozen into images, mannerisms frozen
into images, dance routines and four-minute pop songs (“Like a virgin for the very first time!”) frozen into images. Yet
there is one image that exemplifies them all, a definitive version of the new Madonna, whose images supplanted her
physical reality and made her superhuman. It is the cover of the 23-million selling Like a Virgin album.
It depicts Madonna in the wedding dress in which she audaciously writhed and roiled onstage during the MTV Music
Video Awards. The gown is swept in motion, fanning out around her waist like a calcified cauldron of froth, its
frontispiece of ruffled tulle, strewn with white rose petals, floating (snaking) diagonally at the transfixed viewer. It
appears to rapidly revolve around her, like the ring of stardust our solar system’s Venus never possessed, caught in a
snapshot during a space storm. It levitates in suspended motion by studio magic, her upper body nestled in folds of
billowing cloth. Beneath the tulle, innumerable petticoats of organdy flail into the cup-shape of a peony with the snap
of her bouncing hip; the snap propels luxuriant bolts of silken garment into the air behind her, levitating like the houses
uprooted by a tornado. The sonorous gown partially shades her sly hands, gently but fiercely clasping a BOY TOY
belt buckle about her diagonally-cocked pelvis. The gloves, of flower-patterned translucent lace, fasten at the middle
of her upper arm and terminate at the knuckle. The eyes are drawn first to the hands, and then to the come- hither
eyes that are the metronome of her bold slink. Her jewelry is that of a saint who was born a food court ragamuffin -
cheap plastic baubles around her wrists, the mother-of-pearl and clinking cross pendants on her left ear, her
rhinestone choker and the bodice’s zipper emblazoned with a rhinestone crucifix. The whole of the image is hard - the
substances are luridly brilliant, mass-produced, tactilely harsh, and mysteriously sensuous.
The bodice is fishnet, a material in which the stockings of temptresses are classically netted; it is low-cut, and the two
straps do not cling to her shoulders tightly, instead bouncing above them, repelled from her almost maternal form by
the incarnate life of the garment. Flesh is de-emphasized, its shade and suppleness at best the equal of the silk and
organdy and tulle and lace and hairspray-encased, tousled mane. It is the face, angled downwards to contrast with
the upwards-pointing chest and the outwards and upwards reaching propulsion of the gown, carved into a marble
bust by the camera, that makes this the most powerful image of the “Age of Irony”: the beacon for its arrival, its
impassioned advocate that takes passion with a grain of salt, and the ultimate representative of its thesis. This thesis is
that all words are but images waiting to happen, and that the manipulation of their personalities creates substance in
art, both popular and fine. It is defined by the conflict between the expected and the unexpected that has become the
American cultural status quo since Madonna burst onto the scene, heralding its arrival, a revolutionary who worked
through cable TV and shopping malls, not through bombings and demonstrations, and was ultimately more effective.
How does this “irony” (neither Socratic, nor tragic, nor cosmic) impact the zeitgeist of America? It is the irony where
the actuality’s only purpose is to comment wittily on the long-deposed ancestral standard through acerbic,
eye-winking parody; where the humor that defines its expression is disposable. It erodes substances, biases,
constancies, into party conversations, their essences into commodities; it translates all social ideals into imagery, the
most easily bought and sold, the least difficultly transmitted commodity of the global age. It is the irony that descended
upon the postmodern equivalent of the Roman Empire when the last hopes of revolution petered to a whimper around
Watergate and the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and its last intimations of sexual revolution crumbled with the onslaught
of AIDS; it is the irony that spread its wings when the leader of the wildly successful “New Conservative” movement
was an aging B-movie actor, a scion of Hollywood aligned with the religious right. It may be the only ideology that
makes any sense when the world stops making sense.
And how is this defining image of 1984, which took not communism but capitalism to new extremes in a knee-jerk
reaction to a grimly prophetic Englishman, ironic? It is ironic because it is shot in the sumptuous style of the glamor
shots of glamor queens in the interwar heyday of the Hollywood studio system, the sensuous duotone cathedrals of
chiaroscuro that the faces of Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich expanded to fill like
revelations of a secret; and yet, Madonna does not wear Givenchy nor Chanel nor Dior but a ragtag medley of ripped
and re-sewn lace and tacky costume jewelry that derives as much from punk as from haute couture. Her clothing is
only aesthetically pleasing by the skill of the photographer and by the illusions stewing in the brain of the transfixed
viewer; her body is functional, not another note in the melody of garment and wearer like it was for the glamour
queens of yore.
Madonna is not superlatively gorgeous, does not ascribe to the standards that glorified Grace Kelly and Marilyn
Monroe. She is a diminutive, relatively ordinary-looking young woman born of the malls of suburban Detroit. When
you remove the veil of irony from her face, it does not suggest either “man eater” or “empress.” It is ironic because it
is an empowered, salacious woman, not a vixen, nor a harlot, nor a matron (though she may be pieces of all of these.)
She owns her sexuality with a tenacity demonstrated by her grip on the BOY TOY buckle; and yet she is placed in a
white wedding dress, a Victorian symbol of the feminine ideal of virginity and submission. She will not personify either
side of the “Madonna-Whore” equation of female sexuality, though she will tease both through the shroud of imagery.
But do not make the mistake that the image is a wry joke, a series of one-liners on femininity meant simply to push the
buttons of the viewer - nothing more than a pop culture reduction of a joke personified in punk clothing or in a Gaddis
novel or in feminist circles (as Camille Paglia would have it.) The genuinely seductive, magnetic potency of her face
creates a double irony, defying and calling irrelevant the myriad concealing ironies that dwell on its surface. Within the
lattice of ironic commentary are two eyes drowned in eyeliner, two barely-closed, thickly painted lips that have no
rival for earnestness, for effortless expression, for tenderness, for ferocity, since the days of photography dawned.
Beneath the fa</p>
<p>The groan from the second floor of the Jackson Park Beachhouse was barely audible over the throaty screeches of the Monk Parakeets in the surrounding trees, but the fox who uttered it was in agony. Though the sun was still young in the morning sky, the vulpine creature named Jeong had been awake for hours with a sharp pain piercing the right side of his mouth.
Thats it, Ive had it, he sputtered, if to no one but himself. Ive got to do something to get rid of this pain."
He sluggishly emerged from his lair atop the Beachhouse to call for his friend, and fellow fox, Pythagoras. Pythagoras is much older than I am and therefore much wiser, Jeong reasoned. Surely he will know what to do. Jeong trotted toward the Wooded Island, where he found his friend frolicking.
Pythagoras, you must help me. Jeong implored. Ive had this terrible pain in the side of my mouth all morning.
Ah, Jeong, my boy, good morning. Beautiful weather, isnt it? Downright fantastic. Whats that you say? Youve a pointillism in your mouth? Pythagoras inquired.
Uh, well, yes, yes that sounds right. A dreadfully painful one, too, Jeong stammered.
I do say I know the precise course of action to take, Pythagoras countered. I know of a wonderful ventriloquist who practices at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
A
ventriloquist? Jeong questioned. His understanding of the world was far inferior to that of Pythagoras, but even he had seen ventriloquists perform in the park. Dont you think I should see a dentist?
Ah, yes, Pythagoras stood corrected. Precisely what I meant. Toljanic is his name; I reckon hes one of the best. Ive heard he has the ability to magically transform ones teeth into pure gold.
Oh, wow! Jeong marveled. As usual, he was simply awed by Pythagoras knowledge. Alright, then I will travel to see him. Pythagoras, you must accompany me on my journey. What do you say?
And yes I said yes I will Yes. Pythagoras answered emphatically, and thus the journey began.</p>
<pre><code>Minutes later, the foxes had left Jackson Park and were trotting through Midway Plaisance toward the University of Chicago, when Pythagoras suddenly halted in his tracks.
Jeong! I do believe I have deciphered the great mystery of your pain, he started excitedly, and we must not travel another inch before I rationalize your situation.
Oh, go on, then! Jeong replied eagerly. Was it possible that his clever companion had calculated the genesis of his suffering?
My boy, are you familiar with The Invisible Hand? Pythagoras queried.
Hmm, Jeong pondered; the term definitely sounded familiar. He had a faint memory of encountering the term in a microeconomics course he had once taken at Fox College, but that had been several years ago. The pain in my mouth is certainly not related to economic theory, Jeong speculated. He deduced that his recollection must have been incorrect. No, I dont believe Ive heard of it.
Well, my boy, do you recall last winter when, of a sudden, I could not walk on my hind leg? Pythagoras probed. Jeong remembered this grave occurrence; some humans had noticed a limping Pythagoras and had taken him away in an enormous vehicle. Days later, his friend had returned with a white shoe covering his hind leg. After scrutinizing my situation, I determined that there was only one possible explanation, Pythagoras elaborated, his demeanor quite stern. The Invisible Hand grabbed my hind leg and disabled it.
Jeong was terrified. Was The Invisible Hand, this mysterious, evil force, responsible for the pain in his mouth? What
what does all of this have to do with my mouth? he inquired, now quivering with fear.
That is precisely my next point, my boy. This is my theorem, Pythagoras revealed. I do conjecture that The Invisible Hand has slapped you in the face.
Jeong appeared shocked, as if his worst fears had just been confirmed. You must be right, he remarked. What am I to do? Is there any hope?
Do not fret, my boy. The Invisible Hand may have slapped you, but there is a solution, Pythagoras explained. When my leg was attacked, a doctor placed a white shoe on my leg, correct?
Jeong nodded, although still trembling.
Well, I believe we must travel on, so that a doctor can bind a shoe to your mouth, Pythagoras elucidated. This, and only this, will undermine the work of The Invisible Hand.
Oh, how lucky I am to have such a wise escort, Jeong mused. Well, then what are we waiting for? he returned, now considerably anxious. Lets keep going!
The two travelers finally crossed East 59th Street and approached the University of Chicago Hospital. After scampering inside, they stepped into an elevator occupied by a friendly looking man in a white coat.
Excuse me, kind sir, Pythagoras spoke, as the man looked down toward the two foxes. Would you happen to know where we would find a man by the name of Toljanic?
The man smiled. Well, arent you in luck? I am Doctor Toljanic. I suppose you are looking for me.
</code></pre>
<p>Ah, the great Toljanic! I am Pythagoras; I have heard legends of your prowess in ventriloquism. I do believe you can help us. My friend Jeong is inflicted with a great pointillism in his mouth. You see, last night, The Invisible Hand slapped him in the face, he paused to catch his breathe, and now it is essential that you wrap his mouth with a shoe.
Doctor Toljanic first looked at Jeong, but his head quickly swiveled back to Pythagoras. Are you feeling alright? Im just a dentist, but Im sure the folks in our psychiatric ward would love to speak with you if youve got a moment.
As for you, he now spoke to Jeong. What seems to be ailing you?
Jeong began to describe his situation: the sleepless night, the pain in the right side of his mouth, and the swelling of his cheek.
Ah, all of that talk about ventriloquists and invisibility and shoes had me confused, the doctor replied, shooting a fleeting glance at a silent Pythagoras. Would you open your mouth for me, so I could take a look?
Jeong did as he was told, and the doctor immediately nodded.
My boy, its a good thing you came in today! Doctor Toljanic announced. Weve got to get that wisdom tooth removed before it breaks through your gums! As the elevator door swung open, the doctor whisked the two foxes into his office where he performed the simple surgery.
Jeong and Pythagoras were back in Jackson Park just as quickly as they had left. While Pythagorass pride may have taken a bit longer, Jeongs mouth took just a few days to heal. But even though the Pythagorean Theorem was flawed, the two foxes did take the right angle to resolve their problem, and eventually both lived happily and painlessly ever after.</p>
<p>sort of a meta-irony... thoughts? i applied transfer EA</p>
<p>Good God, mosevios.</p>
<p>nice joyce-esque essay. i wrote something like that, but then i realized i had to make it a little tamer if i wanted to borrow parts for my common app essay</p>
<p>mosevios, that looks more like a term paper than a college essay. it's difficult to even tell what question you answered. hell, it's difficult to ascertain anything at all from that essay. there's an adjective for every noun...</p>
<p>^^Completely agree.</p>
<p>I couldn't find the final version, but here's the rough draft. I was waitlisted. I cried for a week, put myself on the waitlist and pray for a miracle.</p>
<p>Modern improvisational comedy had its start with The Compass Players, a group of University of Chicago students, who later formed the Second City comedy troupe. Here is a chance to play along. Improvise a story, essay, or script that meets all of the following requirements:</p>
<p>It must include the line "And yes I said yes I will Yes" (Ulysses, by James Joyce).
Its characters may not have superpowers.
Your work has to mention the University of Chicago, but please, no accounts of a high school student applying to the University—this is fiction, not autobiography.
Your work must include at least four of the following elements:
a paper airplane
a transformation
a shoe
the invisible hand
two doors
pointillism
a fanciful explanation of the Pythagorean Theorem
a ventriloquist or ventriloquism
the Periodic Table of the Elements
the concept of jeong
number two pencils</p>
<p>Beneath the bright blue sky, marked with brilliant white clouds, the neatly trimmed grass stood resiliently, supporting the weight of Miyako Akizuki and her duffle bag.
She did not know where she was, but she was not complaining about it either. Miyako loved open spaces, and had a thing for neo-gothic buildings. There was an undeniable academic atmosphere; it invigorated Miyako. She wandered about the campus, taken by its domineering presence. </p>
<p>Miyako continued to explore. She wanted to know where she was, in case she had the chance to go to America again. That is, if her family would forgive her impromptu adventure. An image of her strict parents wearing stern expressions… She shook her head to clear the negative feelings. Catching sight of a man who looked like he knew his way around the vicinity, Miyako quickly ran towards him; her duffle bag in tow. </p>
<p>An invisible hand grabbed the man. Panic-stricken, he whirled around; his heart raced, his eyes dilated.
A petite girl, no taller than five feet three inches, held his gaze. Hers, steady and cheerful; his bewildered and suspicious, “Excuse me, hi, where am I?”<br>
The man furtively glanced around. He didn’t want to risk any exposure, the elections were coming up, and who knew what scandal the media would concoct should they take a picture of him and this underage girl? </p>
<p>“Uhm, excuse me, sir?” the girl asked again. The politician faced her once again, and fully assessed the creature before him. He stared at her. Her hoodie had…cat ears, but other than that, she seemed like a normal school girl.
He gave her a practiced smile and replied smoothly, “We are at the University of Chicago, and this is Hyde Park.” </p>
<p>“Souka…So that’s it. That explains the academic feel of this place,” Miyako smiled happily. Without a care in the world, she dropped her duffle bag and collapsed onto the green grass. </p>
<p>“That’s a pretty chapel.”
“It’s the Rockefeller Chapel.”
Miyako plucked a blade of grass idly, “I always wanted to push the doors open during a wedding and say, ‘I object!’ Then I’d take the groom and we would elope.”
The man smiled, and then awkwardly settled down on the cement sidewalk. “Normally a man does that.”
“It’s more exciting that way.” </p>
<p>“What if the groom says no? Marriage is a binding institution, and it takes a lot of guts to push those doors open.” </p>
<p>Miyako took a sidelong glance at the man. She then faced him fully and smiled cheekily. “Then I guess the bride is really lucky.” </p>
<p>The politician smiled. “Excuse me, miss, why do you have a duffle bag with you?”
“I am visiting America.”
“Really, where are you from?”
“Tokyo, Japan,” she beamed. “I decided to visit America last year during a chemistry class. While my teacher was explaining the Kinetic-Molecular Theory, my friend made a paper airplane and darted it at me. It crashed on my desk, specifically on my periodic table—specifically on Americium.”
The man gaped at her, bewildered, shocked, stunned, “T-t-that’s it? That’s your only reason?”
“It’s a very good reason!” she insisted. Miyako proceeded to rummage through her bags. “Look!”
A periodic table was shoved in his face. “See? Number ninety-five, Americium—I circled it with a number two pencil! Actually, I used two number two pencils, the lead in the first one broke.” </p>
<p>The politician stared. He took the paper, “But why?” </p>
<p>Miyako smiled wi****lly, “Because I might never get the chance to do it again.” She stood up suddenly, then ran towards the chapel and pushed the two doors of the Rockefeller Chapel wide open. </p>
<p>“I OBJECT!”
He smiled at the girl as she skipped merrily back towards him. </p>
<p>“Mister, don’t you want to do something before you lose the opportunity to do it?”
The man was speechless. She was reckless, and obviously eccentric, but there was some truth behind her words. “You have a point, I suppose,” He admitted.
“What do you want to do, then?” Miyako asked as she took out a number two pencil.<br>
“I,” the man paused. What did he really want? An image of his wife popped up. “I want to dance with my wife…in France.” </p>
<p>“France, very nice. Really romantic.” </p>
<p>“Yes, our anniversary is coming up. I would like to do something for her.”
“Then you can have this.” A paper airplane landed in front of him. He looked at the girl, then unfolded the paper. It was the girl’s Periodic Table of Elements; Francium was circled. </p>
<p>“I circled it for you, mister. Don’t go back on your words either! Take your wife to France and dance with her. I have to go now, but promise, okay?”
“Right, I will! Thank you! And yes I said yes I will Yes!” he shouted at her retreating back.</p>
<p>I'm bumping this thread for 2013 kids starting to look at how some applicants have approached the essay. A few caveats, though:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Just because this information is here in a public domain does not mean it's helpful or useful. Do not worry if your essay doesn't end up looking or smelling like any of these-- my essay (which I will not share) was written in a "common" tone but included "uncommon" themes. My own goal was to make my writing easy on the eyes, but somewhat nuanced.</p></li>
<li><p>Use these essays to appreciate the variety of approaches that applicants have used in the past, and to get a sense of what the admissions office might be reading.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Is it worrisome that, as a rising junior, I cannot identify the philosophical concepts most of these essays discuss?</p>
<p>[I had to Wikipedia jeong]</p>
<p>Nope, I wouldn't worry about it.</p>
<p>When it comes time to write your essays, keep your eyes on your own work and make it sing in your own way. You don't need to feign knowledge of things you've never encountered to be "smart."</p>
<p>(I don't know what jeong is. I don't know a lot of things).</p>
<p>bump. Does Chicago elicit more creative answers than most other universities due to its prompts? As in a greater proportion. Because I think its easier to have an essay be creative when you have a dull prompt than when the prompts are interesting and thought provoking</p>