the college applications from hell

Hey, it's better than doing homework.

Oh, by the way: my launchcast station. Behold.

I reused my Merit Scholarship essay on the Boulder application. Mwahaha! It didn't even require an essay... How sad. But I'm planning on applying to U Chicago and Northwestern too (they don't require SAT II's - hooray!), and they require a crapload of essays. Northwestern wants an essay, approximately 300 words on why you want to go there, and four short paragraph questions, such as "What's a movie you're embarassed of liking?" Ummm... And then Chicago wants a paragraph on why you want to go there ("How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future?") and a paragraph on your favorite books, plays, etc. And an essay. But the topics are strange:

1. "One of the very nicest things about life," as Luciano Pavarotti once said, "is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating." Pavarotti, in all of his well-fed wisdom, suggests that eating and meals are a separate kind of activity � often a break from the work and play of life. Yet food and meals sustain our lives in many ways every day. Tell us about an ordinary food or meal that may seem mundane to the rest of the world but holds special meaning for you. Think about how the food is prepared, packaged, or served and by whom. Do you eat it in a distinctive manner? At a special time? In a certain place or with select company? Most importantly, explain how this everyday food sustains or satisfies you in a way that another food or meal could not.



2. If you could balance on a tightrope, over what landscape would you walk? (No net.)



3. In his autobiography A Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela writes, "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." Tell us about an unchanging place to which you have returned. In what way has the place never changed? How does its constancy reveal changes in you?



4. Albert Einstein once said, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." Propose your own original theory to explain one of the sixteen mysteries below. Your theory does not need to be testable or even probable; however, it should provide some laws, principles, and/or causes to explain the facts, phenomena, or existence of one of these mysteries. You can make your theory artistic, scientific, conspiracy-driven, quantum, fanciful, or otherwise ingenious � but be sure it is your own and gives us an impression of how you think about the world.
   
   Love, Crop Circles, Time Travel, Numbers, Non-Dairy Creamer, The Platypus, Language, Mona Lisa�s Smile, Sleep and Dreams, The Beginning of Everything, The End of Everything, The College Rankings in U.S. News & World Report, Gray, Art, The Roanoke Colony, Consciousness



5. Take as a model the students who inspired Options 1�4 as you pose and respond to an uncommon prompt of your own. If your prompt is original and thoughtful, then you should have little trouble writing a great essay. Draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, sensible woman or man, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the University of Chicago; take a little risk and have fun.

So, basically, there're 4 topics, and then if you want to do #5 you have to be all CREATIVE. Blech. Ok, not really, but it requires way too much brain power than I can give right now. I'm most interested in number 4, but I'm kind of tempted by number 2. I'd walk over an abyss, yo. Hahahaha. Not really. Oh, just go read Zarathustra, you ignorant fools.

I'm mostly annoyed with all the crap they want me to print out and have teachers/counselors fill out. Speaking of my counselor, she's only known me for, what, 3 months? Course, I'm kind of glad Watkins isn't filling out the recommendations, she creeped me out. Don't know exactly why.