College Admission Essay Handout Packet

College Admission Essay Handout Packet At St. John’s math has life, beauty, purpose and in college I don’t want to wonder why the quadratic formula is written the way it is, I want to know. There have been so many times in high school where we’ve been assigned some math problem for homework and I would just be completely confused by it. In the classroom, ideas and individuals are honored accordingly. Astoundingly, Johnnies spend every class with individuals who probably have entirely different career goals. In their honest pursuit of truth, they recognize that preparing for a career and to be fully human should be one and the same. I stayed up late the night before reading a different book, and though we have only just started reading this one, we are both hooked. Every part of the model and curriculum at St. John’s encourages an honest pursuit of truth, but the classroom discussions most of all. The liturgy of every class-- beginning with a single question and every individual being addressed as Mr. or Ms.-- reflects a zealous love of truth. I read this book for the first time in eighth grade while exploring the causes and consequences of the Mexican revolution. I am not simply interested in St. John’s; I am mesmerized by it. The thought of reading forty books in class over the school year excites me. The image of being surrounded by people similar to me thrills me. The knowledge that this may be in my future invigorates me. There is not one book on its own that calls to me, but knowing they are on my horizon fills me with anticipation. Furthermore, they know this largely happens in discussions about Great Books around small tables. Having tasted this kind of discussion in high school, I will seek it out the rest of my life. This perspective is increasingly, and tragically, rare in a world obsessed with information and afraid of questions. Intellectual complacency even pervades higher education where students are more concerned with marketing themselves and acquiring credentials than pursuing truth and acquiring wisdom. Beliefs are too often determined by trends and political bias, because in the social media age, how we are perceived matters more to us than what we actually think. But once I started it, I realized that I couldn’t help falling for it. Each one starts with a quote, which Calvino uses to explain and explore complex scientific theories. For example, he takes the reader through the creation of the universe, mitosis and meiosis, theories about space and time, dinosaurs, the moon, and many more. The complex tapestries he weaves are hauntingly beautiful, sharing only a common narrator, the ageless Qfwfq, who relays each story as though having witnessed it. On a Saturday halfway into my first semester at Smith, my friend and I went in search of a study room. The hunter spends the rest of the story thinking through all the possible ramifications that come with choosing to exist only within a single second. He refers to this moment as “t zero,” where t is time, and the moment he is experiencing is point zero. Although staying at t zero is appealing, upon the end of the story the hunter must inevitably move through time into the next second where his fate will be decided. When my mom handed me Cosmicomicsin New York and said that I might like it, I was pretty skeptical. I am reluctant to fall in love with book someone recommends. I can see me, a year older, sitting inside, curled up around a book and blanket. The sun has set early, so a lamp is on, shining warm light onto the pages. A roommate is across from me reading the same book, and every couple minutes we stop to comment. Almost without exception, every room we peeked into was packed with those little chairs that Will Ferrell squeezes himself into in Elf, the ones with the little writing shelf attached. On a philosophical basis, I chafe against the competitive, individualistic approach to learning that these desks represent. On a physical basis, at six-foot-two, I can barely fit behind them. This is my favorite quotation from my favorite book, The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela. I want to go to St. John’s because the whole methodology is in such a way that I can begin to love math. Every tutorial and seminar is taught with this same level of depth and understanding.