<p>Thank you perfectpixie. </p>
<p>I hope what I posted serves as a source of encouragement for those who are intimidated by highly creative essays posted earlier.</p>
<p>I was wondering if University of Chicago has had any anti-smoking things lately? Because my intended essay does involve cigarettes.</p>
<p>I suppose, I’ll post mine up then, shall I?</p>
<p>Accepted, EA: </p>
<p>Have you ever ridden a time machine? The experience is something like pogo-sticking through the Alps while improvising Rachmaninoff on a left-handed saxophone.
The size of a modest church organ with roughly twice the knobs and gadgetry and enough lights to outshine a Christmas tree, I present to you the one and only man-made time machine. A device standing as the greatest feat man has yet to produce if anyone knew how to operate it. The praised and hated Professor Monfeariam, sole creator of this confounded middle-finger to present-day science, left but an indecipherable book of riddles to explain the final keys of the fourth dimension. </p>
<p>Historians, mathematicians, and cloned Americans pound, pull, twist, and push the answers of the universe into this Gordian knot in searched of a solution to a senile geniuss book of gibberish. Digits zero through nine have been exhausted, esoteric ancient-Aztec symbols ineffective, popular commercial jingles from the nineteen forties, recipes for grandmas best extra-double-chocolate-chip cookies each ended with the dink-clikript that manifested the personified derision of the haughty machine. After over a year of exasperation, even the idealistic and optimistic slowly deferred the promises of the mechanism to a cruel hoax. The fad subsided and the once world-admired time machine was left to stagnate in a forgotten corner.</p>
<p>Young minds such as mine, however, never relinquished the possibilities of Monfeariams machine. The Unofficial Society for the Time Travelers of Tomorrow and Yesteryear, an offbeat group of fanciful adolescents, promoted weekly research toward the quantum physics possible impossibilities. Being the inquisitive fellow I was, to my retrospective embarrassment, I followed this group unwaveringly. With tomes of collected research from strugglers before us and the cocksure passion of the naïve, we lowered our eyes to the doubters of the old generation. We were the leaders of the new day. We were bestowed the knowledge to do the impossible. We were the Galileos of our time the Edisons of our era. Professional physicists would roll their eyes as we once more teleported to the old research facility to sketch and scrutinize the purposeless metalwork. On one of these weekly rendezvous, the critical fluke altered the lives of all of us forever.</p>
<p>Professor Rilovatre, renowned for his findings in the use of black holes and engineering, happened to be visiting the strange machine that fateful day. When the group of us entered, eyes gaping at the over-delighted honor, Rilovatre was enlightening some fellow scientists on his discovers about the device. To my curiosity, he had an air of nonchalance, leaning comfortably to one leg, a pacified duck tucked under his right arm.</p>
<pre><code>Taking into play Monfeariams abnormal since of humor, I have concluded the solution to lie with ancient superstitions, Rilovatre continued, With what would be the destruction of any other machine, I believe youll find to be the answer to this problem. What got in the way of our success is that we werent daring far enough.
</code></pre>
<p>Having concluded his speech, Rilovatre approached the machine with an intensity of purpose that filled the room. With a great scientific air, he shoved the protesting duck up a large pipe near the front of the time machine whilst jiggling the main lever rapidly back and forth. An explosion devoid of sound and color reached the crowed. We knocked here and about on an otherworldly plain. Due to much suppression, the details of the travel are not ones I feel safe digging to the front of my thoughts. The only word I will give you is mind-ripping. The end of the bizarre journey left me suspended awkwardly between a tree and an above-ground swimming pool June of the year twenty-o-five.</p>
<p>The twenty-first century has taken some time to get use to the culture is certainly not what the history books made it out to be, and even after five years of familiarizing myself with this new life, the riddle of the time machine still lingers about my mind.
Did Rilovatre solve the unsolvable problem or explode a priceless machine? How could mutilating a duck even come close to equaling the over-complicated variable? Idly pondering my surreal past life, what conclusion I come to is the further innovation takes us the less the universe makes any sense. As though the human race is building a house from the roof down, we have substance before foundation. X does not equal some duck squished in a cylinder. The meaning is Dada. Man can make no sense of x, and without sense, purpose falls to the wayside. The meaning of x is why men believe in gods, or fate, or chance, something that understands beyond them, something that assures purpose when faced with chaos. These found xs, answers leading only to questions, drift reality further to icy darkness and after that, another x.</p>
<p>Hello everyone,</p>
<p>I’m a hopeful transfer applicant who, for the next two months, will live in a constant state of anticipation! In the meantime, I was hoping I could receive some constructive criticism from you kind folks in regards to my essay, posted below, that answers the second essay question (two types of people). I’m aware that what’s done is done; however, who’s to say I still can’t welcome positive or negative feedback?!</p>
<p>Thanks in advance! Also, congratulations to everyone who got accepted, and good luck to everyone applying as a transfer! Peace.</p>
<p>Col Legno Buttato</p>
<p>There’re two types of people in the world: People who take advantage of humanity, and people who help humanity. You may be wondering, “Well, (Insert my name here), I can think of a possible third type with your flawed answer: People who don’t take advantage of humanity nor help humanity.” Whether you or anybody else on our planet thinks this, then I’ll be delighted to inform you that you’re terribly mistaken because people who do nothing are, in fact, taking advantage of not only humanity, but of their own personal lives since we’re all put on Earth to encourage biophilia (“love of life” in ancient Greek) and to preserve the blocks of biodiversity as a way to enhance the possibility that we will persist into the future. Phew, that was a long-winded sentence.</p>
<p>Take a look at what some ignoramus named Theodor W. Adorno, one of the most “important” philosophers and “social critics” in Germany post-World War II, infamously said in his 1951 collection of essays Cultural Criticism and Society: In verbatim, “Lyric poetry is not possible after the Holocaust.” Let’s deconstruct his insolent statement by psychoanalyzing the minds, so to speak, of the first and last words.</p>
<p>Firstly, what is “lyric poetry?” I define it as the medium in which collective intelligence is expressed; whether it is through the brilliance of a ballpoint pen, the placid polishing of a paintbrush, spirited spoken words that swell with significance, or what have you.</p>
<p>Secondly, what is “Holocaust?” I think it’s the red and yellow plague—the conglomerate of corporations that awfully spread their hydrogenated oils and “Golden Arches;” the relocation of Rodney King’s trial to Simi Valley and the acquittal of all officers involved; and the Bosnian Genocide and their srbosjeks, the Serb cutthroats who slaughtered prisoners in Croatian concentration camps in WWII. But ultimately, most would agree that Holocaust is genocide, and I concur; however, with a catch. The genocide needn’t be physical, for it can be mental.</p>
<p>Thus Adorno’s quote is a mental Holocaust—a genocide of humanity’s hope. If that buffoon was truly an important social critic, then he’d at the very least have faith in mankind to create beauty in the midst of resistance because out of every bad situation comes some good, just as though tangerines have bitter outer shells, their inner flesh brims with sweetness. And please don’t tell me you’re a realist because I am too. If you’re truly a revolutionary free thinker who believes in a change, then nothing will derail your trains of thought that lead toward achieving that change. Alas, in my books, Adorno is filed under the people who take advantage of humanity section.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there are people who help humanity, such as Mortimer J. Adler, former professor of Philosophy at The University of Chicago and evangelist for his “Great Books Program.” Adler’s Socratic Method style of teaching sounded like col legno buttato—the stick of the bow that strikes the strings of a violin to produce fabulous crescendos—because it plays the sensory nerves of his students’ frontal lobes in unfathomable time signatures. In other words, despite being a rigorous scholar of academia, he was able to educate and reach out to all kinds of people in an articulate yet comprehensible manner. He was able to help humanity.</p>
<p>I see myself as a person who helps humanity. I’m the social woodpecker (not butterfly) with an unquenchable thirst to drink the fruits of knowledge by pecking the connotational bark of all things with intellectual curiosity to wholly deconstruct them. I’m Adler’s enjambment [2], and more! I’m a young noble man who, through becoming a future educator and scholar himself in the near future, has a revolutionary vision to shift the mentalities of all Earthlings through expressing his collective intelligence—his lyric poetry.</p>
<p>I envision myself as a high school English teacher who, while stalwartly seeking scholarship, will spread his knowledge, indubitably inspire, and motivate his future students. I will make them express their most abyssal emotions through a voice that they thought would forever remain unheard. I will play devil’s advocate by probing them with quality questions that will surely force critical thinking beyond the norm and against the grain. I hope that they will voluntarily spend hours after school as the hands of Grandfather Clocks tick into the night, refusing to leave the room, repeatedly insisting, “But it’s just not saying what I want it to say yet.” I hope that each one of my future students will leave my classroom constantly analyzing, criticizing, and questioning their place in our world, just as I have. I hope one day they will go out into society with their weapons of mass construction—their lyric poetry—that will drop bombs of philosophical and poetic compassion to inspire and motivate not only righteousness and the desire to help humanity, but also to stimulate a love for all forms of life from atoms to zebras and everything in between.</p>
<ol>
<li>^ Enjambment: The movement of syntactic phrasing from the end of one line to the beginning of the next.</li>
</ol>
<p>I’m a transfer applicant applying for the Fall of '11. </p>
<p>In response to “How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future?” I wrote about my visit to UChicago in Homeric dactylic hexameter, so it might seem strange if you’re unfamiliar with The Iliad or The Odyssey. And yes, it ends with a libation : p</p>
<p>An Intellectual Odyssey</p>
<p>Sing, O Goddess, the wonder-filled story of Austin, the swift son
Born to the Glorious Ron; sing now of his journey to Chi-Towns
Great University of Chicago. Just as blacksmiths with hard fire
Melt lead, flooding it oer the impression that waits to be poured full,
Forging the implements used by the workmen who build up great states
So did the school, being lit with a blaze of Maroon by the god Zeus,
Melt down oceans of scholarly appetence, pouring them, boild bright,
Straight into ravenous Austins unquenchable intellectbrave mind
Forging the temprament owned by the artists who shape the refined soul.
Zeus will was done from the moment the two converged. </p>
<p>White billowswind-blownopened, and honey-warmed bright light shot forth,
Dazzlingly bursting the air into gold flame borne of august gods;
Wheeling in heaven, an eagle of the bright sky, plummeting, cried out!
Basking in the glory from Zeus of the Storm-Cloud, ichor divine flowed
Fast through his brave heart; Austin in gratitude, rising now, roared great:
O Lord Zeus of the Gathering Storm-Cloud, knowing that I burned
On stone altars a doubly fat-wrapped thigh-bone in high praise
Meant for the father to Gods and to Earth-bound sufferers, man-kind,
Grant me this day intellectual nourishmentbountiful mind-yield.
Austin, renewed in vitality, strode toward the orange house called Max P.</p>
<p>On through the commons where lions of mind lounged, sanguinely plied minds
O rare! Saw he now students of vast and voracious desire, souls
Reared for the purpose of reading in depth and for thinking the free thoughts:
Noble strength and vitality rent the immaculate brisk air.
Just as a man who has dived down, swallowed by murk of the wine-dark
Sea will emerge and then open his wide lungs, gasping for bright sky
Sharp will become his deprived mind once more, flooded with pure breath.
So was that brave soul waked by the students intelligent, fine jive,
Standing there, circled by valiant peers who were breathing most sweet air.
Straightning, he drank it like sweet mead brewed to invigorate mens souls.</p>
<p>Austin now standing there, furious valor incarnated, shone bright
Brilliant gold pierced all eyes fixed on that spot, for a god smiled,
Lending him majesty; students on all sides cried out: This man
Surely is favored by some god. Stranger, who are you? So great,
Having been smiled on by some god! Austin, not missing a beat, roared:
I am the son of the Glorious Ron; that man named me Austin.
Famous am I for my skill in the arts of the speech and the writ word;
This fame goes to the rims of the Earth. Ron sired me with great strength.
Awe-struck, Philipos opened his mouth: Great fame is of Austin;
Noble is Glorious Ron, and his countenance shines in your bold face.</p>
<p>Now did the swift son sired of the Glorious Ron, great man, speak:
Rare friend, hither I came to the campus of UC, proud place,
Seeking a certain approach to the knowledge of Earth for which men strive
Ceaselessly, seeking to attain an understanding. Angry am I; great
Torrents of rage flow over my mind; foul scholars have spurned gods,
Spurned their doctrines that hold we must look at the wholeno blind dumb
Folly, to isolate parts from the body. Now tell me, O brave friend
Where can I find this holistic mentality? Dwells it in this place?
Philipos reared up, glorying, wide-rent strong lips, brave man,
Giving his answer: Indeed does this thought loom large in this proud place.</p>
<p>O Muses, you that have homes on Olympusfor you do command all
Knowledge while we know nothingrelate the list offered by this man;
Let me just list the important ones; all are innumrable in count;
Not if I had ten tongues with myriad mouths and a bronze heart
Could I name all. Daughters of Zeus of the Aegis, now, help me!
First there was Iliad, offered by Behnke, a cunning and brave mind.
Next there was Greek Thought; Litrature, led by magnanimous-soul Payne.
Then came Vergil, a class so renowned in instruction by wise Wray.
Finally Johnson, with fine Metamorphoses, points us to fierce wit.
So were the classes, sagacity-stocked, called, crisp in the clear air.</p>
<p>Austin was gripped nowprimal euphoria flooded him, soul-swept:
Think of a palisade marshaled to fence off lambs who sit breast-fed,
Helpless, immaculate limbs hung slight on their weak frames.
Think how a lion with long mane, ravenous, hungring with cold rage,
Mounts on the palisade men with their spears at the ready will guardmen
Bristling with death for the predator. Cold blood courses in thick veins,
Portending doom for the powdery lambs as the lion with his great bounds
Clears the impediment, lunging through darkness with lamb in his cruel jaws.
Just like the lion, on hearing this catalogue, Austin was swept up;
Ravenous hunger for knowledge divine held fast to his brave soul. </p>
<p>Beautifly nobly and quickly he sprinted with fervor divine, grace
Sent from the heavenly Zeus of the Storm-Cloud, vibrant with life-force.
Reeling his eyes up, gazing to sacred Olympus, he cried out
His speech soared to the peak of the heavens, and carrying dire need:
Father of Earth and divine sky! Grant to me Hermes, his swift aid,
Keen-eyed pilot of dreams; for his nimble and sly mind oft help
Ease some of mans aches. Sandals with wings lift men to the fine height
Nigh the Olympian spire: and so Hermes, escórt me to UC!
Knowledge is treasured there, vaulted from naught but the keenest of men. Hear
Clearly my prayer, O Hermes, as wine from my own stores pours out!</p>
<p>Oh my god Augustus. Are you in AP Latin? Because not only is it dactylic hexameter, but also the style is fairly similar–what with all the extended similes and whatnot. :)</p>
<p>That was really, really amazing. I hope you get in.</p>
<p>O wondrous Augustus, we are not equal to your Achillean glory</p>
<p>My high school didn’t offer AP Latin. I just learned it through independently reading Homer and Vergil. I’m really glad you like it though!</p>
<p>@Shipper: Come, friend, let these Trojan dogs taste our cold steel</p>
<p>Augustus, now, the good spear, stood alone; no Argive held that ground with him, as fear had gripped them all. And grimly vexed, he spoke to his own valor: </p>
<p>"Here is trouble. What will become of me? A black day, this, if I show fear and run before this crowd, but worse if I am captured, being alone. Zeus routed all the rest of the Dan</p>
<p>Did you just quote that awesome passage in The Iliad in which Odysseus slaughters hordes of Trojans, substituting my name for his?</p>
<p>New best friend.</p>
<p>Finding X: A Computational Journey
Lights dawns on a dynamic two-dimensional universe. A deafening click rings, and energy pulses from a hidden source through the scope of the land, ready for the possibilities it can call into being. The inhabitants of the universe were in a state of partial-slumber, being mostly awoken from complete hibernation by the terrific blast of pure power. The beings numbered an uncountable infinity, as they could form together into more complex beings numbering a set larger than all natural numbers. They had no government and no leader, but followed a set of laws never broken and rarely altered. On the occasions which they needed to perform tasks, a leader was elected by merit of suitability and nothing more. It could be said that in all of the universes, theirs and all others, they were the only perfection.
From an imperceptible world, the same the original click rang from, a deafeningly loud series of clicks called the following into existence: 〖x= lim〗┬(y→10)〖(〖2y〗^2-200)/(7y-70)〗. The inhabitants of the universe were awoken, two in particular though had an incredible feeling nestled within them; they were X and Y and they felt a drive to know themselves. There was an unseen force relating them together, the finding of which would be the first step to knowing themselves and each other. Almost in response to their consideration of that connection, a voice rang out and beckoned them to come near.
As they approached, the image of two great bars stacked on top of one another came into view and they recognized Equal: a being with great perception when in the presence of others. The three entered into a knowing silence as Equal contemplated them both. After a period of thought, he explained that their answer lie among the positive numbers, but a hidden danger would make itself clear as they approached. Before leaving, Equal enigmatically mentioned, Forget not LHôpital.
With a destination in mind, X and Y made their way to the area where positive numbers resided. As far as the eye could perceive, two rows of numbers were lined up: one line for X and one for Y. The process was simple: Y could ask the number in its row to find the corresponding number in Xs row. If the number was right, X and Y would finally know themselves. Y started with zero and 20/7 was shown to X, but it wasnt yet right. Y went on asking in order; with each number checked, the sense of being closer grew. As Y finished asking eight though, a sense of foreboding crept in. Ignoring it and continuing to nine, Y asked and as 38/7 was declined by X, sheer terror replaced the initial foreboding. As Y looked at the ten, it saw an infinitude of nothing. Y knew that ten held some secret answer, but it was masked by a rule unbreakable: division by zero.
Thinking hard, Y remembered what Equal had said about LHôpital. Grunting and straining, Y took the derivative its top and its bottom, yielding: 〖x= lim〗┬(y→10)〖4y/7〗. Empowered, Y gazed into ten and made it bring up Xs number. From in-between five and six in Xs column emerged 40/7. X then knew itself to be 40/7. X had found itself.
The world shook and a last click was heard, more silent than the last. With it, all the energy was sucked out of the universe and the beings returned to hibernation. The calculus student had just pressed the off button on his calculator.
(It appears that CC will not display mathematical notation well, so I will list the usages in extended format here by order of appearance)
x equals the limit as y approaches 10 of two y squared minus 200 divided by seven y minus seventy
Twenty divided by seven
Thirty-eight divided by seven
x equals the limit as y approaches 10 of four y divided by seven
Forty divided by seven
Forty divided by seven</p>
<p>Muses live on Mt. Helicon, not Olympus. n00b</p>
<p>Actually there were different groups of Muses that dwelt in different locations. Mt. Helicon and Mt. Olympus were both sacred to the Muses, but it’s fair to say they dwelt on Olympus more–“Nor was there any lack of delight in the banquet / Before them, nor in the gorgeous lyre that Apollo played, nor yet in the dulcet Muses, who / Entertained them all with sweet antiphonal song” (18). No Olympian feast was complete without entertainment, and the Muses embodied song and art.</p>
<p>While two springs sacred to the Muses were located on Mt. Helicon, that doesn’t imply that Mt. Helicon was their home. Place of worship does not imply place of residence.</p>
<p>Out of the 8 or so times the Muses are invoked in my translation of The Iliad, four of them explicitly say “Tell me now, O Muses, you that have homes on Olympus.”</p>
<p>Or it could even be figurative–“You that frequent Olympus.”</p>
<p>It’s a meaningless point to contest. Also, Olympus worked better for the meter. n00b</p>
<p>1) Using Homeric epithets to contradict an overwhelming cultural tradition is a serious fallacy. Affixes like ‘white-armed’ to Hera, or ‘horse-breaker’ to Hektor have absolutely no traditional mythological substantiation, and exist purely because they “work better for the meter.” Aside from the enchanted horses of Laomedon (and, ironically, the Trojan horse) there were no horses at Troy for Hektor to “break.” </p>
<p>NEVERTHELESS, YOU ARE RIGHT…</p>
<p>2) Insofar as this is a “meaningless point to contest!” If SPECIFIC criticisms of this “essay” offend your sensibilities, perhaps you would be more pleased with the GENERAL criticism that this is a <em>■■■■■■■■ piece of writing.</em> As far as substance goes, it is vacuous, inane, unoriginal and almost irritating. </p>
<p>3) You are totally misinterpreting the nature of Chicago if you think you’ll be admitted on mere gimmickry. Confounding “cute, nerdy stylism” with “unique, profound, intellectual, provocative, SUBSTANTIVE thought” is a grave error.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Fine, but as I’m sure you would with difficulty see were you to actually read his post he gave other reasons for his choice. At any rate, your original criticism is totally disingenuous at worst and inanely self-contradictory at best because it’s quite obvious that “helicon” would not have fit his meter where he used “Olympus.” There is of course, judging by the self-awareness of your post, the low probability that you don’t understand the meaning of the phrase “figurative language” – but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, since you seem to be capable of Googling for information on the Muses, and are at the very least an effective conduit of basic fact, even if higher intellectual functions are beyond you.</p>
<p>I’m friends with Augustus and on his behalf I showed his essay to several professors from the Classics and Comparative Literature departments at my premiere LAC. He gave it to the English professor at his current school. Of this audience (all of whom had the highest praise for it) not to mention the people who read it in this forum, you are the first person to dislike it and, let alone raise any sort of objections along these lines. Many intelligent, highly educated and experienced people saw an implication of the text, something far beyond what you complacently define as “substance.” It implies a strong familiarity with Homer and the Homeric idiom, as the imitation is quite convincing. You’ve probably never attempted writing in any meter, let alone dactylic hexameter, but if you had you’d realize that this essay also demonstrates Augustus’ ability to write good English verse in a very difficult meter, whose constraints necessitate a structure of thought (however unoriginal) and creativity of diction that, frankly, most of the essays posted here utterly lack. I don’t know how long it took him to write this, but I probably don’t want to know, either.</p>
<p>I’m guessing that you find it “almost irritating” because you have striven in vain to produce something approaching what you call “unique, profound, intellectual, provocative, substantive thought,” and dislike the idea that someone could produce something impressive on the basis of mere form. In response to your snivelling post-modern nostrum I say that, for any serious intellect, form matters a great deal, and power of expression matters, especially when there is no variation in substance. You aren’t reading the essays on this forum critically enough if you really believe that there is any profundity or originality of thought or substance. As I’m sure is the case at an admissions office table, virtually all of them say precisely the same **** with varying degrees of creativity, especially given a prompt like the one Augustus was given. Next year my undergraduate career ends and I’ll be in a competitive graduate program for Physics; I’ve spent a great deal of time in my academic career around highly intelligent and motivated undergraduates, and I even corrected papers for an undergraduate philosophy class during my third semester. Allow me to justify your shortcomings when I say that you are romanticizing the capacity of your typical undergraduate and of Academia in general. Don’t think that the University of Chicago is an exception, either. I have friends at Harvard, Dartmouth, Williams, etc. who all describe exactly the same phenomena and generally confirm my analysis of this reality.</p>
<p>You’re wrong about everything except the elementary fact of the Muses’ residence, and even from that truism of a premise you had no consistent argument to begin with. Leave, petulant one.</p>
<p>Essay Option 2. Dog and Cat. Coffee and Tea. Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye.
Everyone knows there are two types of people in the world. What are they?</p>
<p>The road is lined with automobiles; some are speeding along while others
progress at their own rate. No vehicle originates as any particular kind of car, just a heap
of scrap metal and plastic. Over time these basic materials are shaped, formed, and
assembled into a fully functioning means of transportation. That’s all a car really is – a
way to get from point A to point B. But that just is not true. The ideas associated with an automobile are equally as meaningful. When I look down the long stretch of pavement, I see only sports-cars and minivans.</p>
<p>The sports-car is primarily concerned with the start and the finish. First off the
line, this vehicle makes sure to get a length up on the competition by whatever means is
necessary. To the sports-car, that’s what the road is – a competition. Every endeavor that it partakes in is about reaching the finish before anyone else has a chance. For some
drivers, this is exactly what they are looking for in a car. It serves its main purpose of
transportation very efficiently and even looks appealing in the process. However, there is
no start and there is no finish; in fact, there is no race at all. The sports-car
misunderstands the checkpoints along the way, thinking that they are only minor
indicators of its progress in the competition.</p>
<p>I am a minivan. I may not be as flashy or as quick as my sporty counterpart, but I
do have my own purpose on the road. My modest shape is often misconstrued as
“boring”, but I am confident that it is the best possible structure for my intentions. It
gives me both the space to accommodate all those who desire to accompany me and
ample surface area for windows. I am not worried by the time I lose when I pick up
passengers; what difference does a few minutes make anyway? If there is no race and
there is no finish line, then what is the point in upsetting over the time between
checkpoints? I am more concerned with the experiences had between stopping points and
the people that I choose to share them with. I can drive fast enough to get where I need to go, but not so fast that I forget to look out of my windows along the way.
Both kinds of vehicles have their own place on the road – their own lanes in
which they fit comfortably. Often there is incentive for these two models to work
together as well. If something from within the minivan is in need to travel more rapidly,
there is still one passenger seat available in the sports-car.
There are some people who create original ideas while others are more skilled in
making those concepts reality. Just as the road is made more interesting by having both
kinds of cars, life is facilitated by the cooperation of those who compete and those who
collaborate. The personalities of these individuals may clash in the process of traveling
the road, and an accident may occur when a minivan crosses into the sports-car lane.
Hopefully, the people that the minivan has acquired along the way will be willing to
assist with the damage and mediate any disputes. As long as the end result is progress, it
seems that both cars are eventually satisfied.</p>
<p>^ accepted EA… formatting of the essay got a little messed up when i copied it from commonapp</p>
<p>tbh, as someone who has read The Odyssey and The Iliad (and almost everything else that has been written), I found the essay pretty irritating too, although I do not have “a strong familiarity with Homer and the Homeric idiom.” Maybe this is what Chicago is looking for, maybe it is not.</p>
<p>@Shipper </p>
<p>1) Is the idea of ‘substance’ in writing a seriously boggling concept to you? A’s essay-that-isn’t-an-essay says almost nothing about himself as a person, a student, or a thinker. It is painfully clear that his first priority was fitting meter, which is the reason he elected to a) adopt a Homeric designation over the one that 99%+ of people would recognize. b) incorporated a bunch of perfunctory nonsense. </p>
<p>2)I don’t know what is subjectively impressive to you, but I can assure you that objectively [development of a compelling idea >>>> counting syllables]. Any idiot can ejaculate a pile of dactylic hexameter, but most poets choose not to. Why? Because DH is notoriously ill-suited to the English language! Augustus does not succeed in being expressive, but he certainly succeeds in looking EXTREMELY PRETENTIOUS.</p>
<p>3) So long as we are going to participate in a bunch of intellectual cockwaving to lend our respective criticism legitimacy, I think it’s worthwhile to point out the following: I do not need to mention the 10+ statewide medals I have won in Greek Mythology, History, and Literature (which is why I didn’t need to google anything). Nor do I need to mention the tens of thousands of poems I have read, nor that I was selected as a specialist in Classics and Poetry for my states All-Star Quiz Bowl Team.
What is really worthwhile to mention here is that when I was admitted to Chicago in December, I was sent a handwritten letter from my admissions officer telling explaining in detail how good my supplemental essay was. It was about the Husserlian cognitive tendencies in the philosophy of Zhuang Zi and my own introspection. (Let me know if you need me to tell you what any of those words mean). When I say “unique, profound, intellectual, provocative,” I am not just pulling it out of some “snivelling post-modern nostrum.” I am specifically quoting a Chicago Admissions officer, with whom I have talked in person three times and wrote the aforementioned letter. </p>
<p>I don’t care what any of your professors or imaginary friends at Harvard say. Like both of the two of you, they are totally missing the point of the supplementary essay. It is supposed to demonstrate your intellectual caliber, which is absolutely not the same as the ability to inappropriately employ a form which no serious non-Greek/Latin poet has ever used. </p>
<p>Suffice to say, I REALLY REALLY KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT.
I hereby declare myself <strong><em>Champion Of This Thread</em></strong></p>
<p>Let us all hope that there are no stray darts in this thread, as the amount of hot air the would be released is practically unfathomable</p>