Howdy folks,
I was waitlisted at UChicago last year, and reapplied this year while I was city-hopping in Europe. Although I was ultimately rejected, I thought it was a quirky & fun essay and wanted to share.
[QUOTE=""]
Do not post your essays on CC when applying as it will cause them to come up in a plagiarism checker. My application was already rejected, and I don't anticipate reapplying so there is no danger for me. <<<
[/QUOTE]
Prompt: “What is square one and can you actually go back to it?”
In 1860, Milton Bradley created the first version of The Game of Life. According to them,
square one is a decision between “start college” or “start career.” Picking career gives players
an early advantage in the game but severely limits their choices later. On the other hand, the
college square saddles players with a bit of unsavory early game debt. According the The Game
of Life, I’m just now sticking my toes off of square one, and now that I’ve picked “start college,”
there’s no turning back.
If we’re playing the irreverent parody Game of REAL Life, which can be purchased
underneath the Burnside Bridge among the cacophony of tourist friendly Portland weirdness
available at the Saturday Market, I’m somewhere between the twenty-third and twenty-seventh
square having dodged abortion, assault, and a potential drive-by-shooting. Still, given that I
passed up on the opportunity to invest in a “250 petabyte high speed virtual quantum computer
with a time machine attachment” (really), there’s no feasible way to make it back to square one.
Maybe if I pick a game with a less firm grasp on the linearity of time, like Settlers of
Catan, I can find my way back to the start. Indeed, in Settlers each subsequent action is linked
back to the initial placement of one of your settlements on the crowded intersection of tightly
organized hexes. “Square one?”
If my life experiences were organized into neat hexes in the way resources like wood
and stone are in Settlers, I have no doubt that my square for education would be crowded and
rambunctious. It would be bursting with curiosity, exploration, and joy. I consider myself lucky for
the love of learning that my parents fostered in my brother and me from day one.
For a decent bulk of my childhood, my little brother was my chief playmate and
classmate. When they committed to homeschooling, my parents swiftly decided that, “there’s
nothing in elementary education that your parents cannot teach you.” My parents would pull
together groups of our friends to learn about vikings, volcanoes, fractions, or particles. Occasionally the youngest, sometimes the oldest, and usually somewhere in the middle, I got to see the benefits of multi-age learning first hand.
The dining room table was a debate stage at all hours and the competitive nature of
zealous learners was exploited for questions on locations, dates, and data. Our daily education
started with, “Boys! Time to wake up!” and ended with “Boys! Go to sleep!” For me, the
effortless love of learning I found as a homeschooler is my square one.
In my opinion, a return to that square one isn’t just possible, it’s necessary. I’m looking
for a place where the learning isn’t just confined to the classroom. A place where debate and
discussion take place over lunch. Somewhere I can get hands on with ideas and challenge the
status quo. Watching my parents create classes as a kid, I learned a thing or two about finding
the right teacher for a subject. Finding a school that’s the right fit for me will help me get back to
square one, where the type of unabashed curiosity-driven learning I crave resides.
It’s the Game of Life and I’ve made my choice. Now it’s time for my first roll