ninjamanawesome
Sep 22, 2009
Undergraduate / Bambi and George Bush (Common App admissions essay) [6]
This is my essay to the prompt:
Describe a person who has had a significant influence on you and describe that influence.
All feedback is appreciated.
When I emerged into this world I was a bundle of innocence, naivety and ignorance. Of course, since my emergence I have aged and with my gaining of years came a loss of innocence. This was not a harsh sudden process in my earliest years, rather I was slowly eroded. As the river of experience flowed through my life I grew aware of the deepening stream bed of cynicism appearing at the back of my mind. The new found cynicism did not worry me terribly, for I felt it was a part of growing up and accepted it as a normal part existence. A child does not notice themself gradually mature, but rather are one day hit by the realization that they are no longer a child. So it was for me and my mental coming of age. The self-awareness of my cynicism was earth shattering in it's suddenness, so I reasoned that the source of this disillusionment could be attributed to a single definitive source. I began the search for the sinister wickedness that had killed my innocence. Surely my parents who had molded me since birth could not be responsible for this, for they who had raised me were open, honest, and devoid of hypocrisy. I had almost forsaken my search for the snake who had fed me the apple, when the source of my disillusionment was presented before me. George W. Bush was staring up at me from the newspaper that my father had just discarded.
When a child is asked what they want to be their answer is invariably a position of responsibility and authority like a policeman or fireman. All children want to be righteous and good and figures of authority embody that pure spirit. So if government is the highest authority, and authority is moral; what happens when the government acts immorally? Starting wars under false pretenses and trampling over people's rights could be justified in my partially developed mind, but destroying the environment certainly could not. War was waged against terrorists, for if we don't stop them they would kill all of us; the evildoers were crafty and knew how to evade capture, so extreme means had to be taken to unearth them. But why must Bambi die for a rich man in a suit? The president was resigning the woodland creatures of the world to a slow, painful death through poisoning and starvation and I knew this to be wrong. If the president killed animals then were policeman really always right, was every person arrested evil, were my teachers always right? My life suddenly became more complex as black and white turned to shades of grey and the old certainties that had sheltered me crumbled under scrutiny. It was in this manner that the man who was charged with sheltering and protecting this nation robbed me of my innocence.
This is my essay to the prompt:
Describe a person who has had a significant influence on you and describe that influence.
All feedback is appreciated.
When I emerged into this world I was a bundle of innocence, naivety and ignorance. Of course, since my emergence I have aged and with my gaining of years came a loss of innocence. This was not a harsh sudden process in my earliest years, rather I was slowly eroded. As the river of experience flowed through my life I grew aware of the deepening stream bed of cynicism appearing at the back of my mind. The new found cynicism did not worry me terribly, for I felt it was a part of growing up and accepted it as a normal part existence. A child does not notice themself gradually mature, but rather are one day hit by the realization that they are no longer a child. So it was for me and my mental coming of age. The self-awareness of my cynicism was earth shattering in it's suddenness, so I reasoned that the source of this disillusionment could be attributed to a single definitive source. I began the search for the sinister wickedness that had killed my innocence. Surely my parents who had molded me since birth could not be responsible for this, for they who had raised me were open, honest, and devoid of hypocrisy. I had almost forsaken my search for the snake who had fed me the apple, when the source of my disillusionment was presented before me. George W. Bush was staring up at me from the newspaper that my father had just discarded.
When a child is asked what they want to be their answer is invariably a position of responsibility and authority like a policeman or fireman. All children want to be righteous and good and figures of authority embody that pure spirit. So if government is the highest authority, and authority is moral; what happens when the government acts immorally? Starting wars under false pretenses and trampling over people's rights could be justified in my partially developed mind, but destroying the environment certainly could not. War was waged against terrorists, for if we don't stop them they would kill all of us; the evildoers were crafty and knew how to evade capture, so extreme means had to be taken to unearth them. But why must Bambi die for a rich man in a suit? The president was resigning the woodland creatures of the world to a slow, painful death through poisoning and starvation and I knew this to be wrong. If the president killed animals then were policeman really always right, was every person arrested evil, were my teachers always right? My life suddenly became more complex as black and white turned to shades of grey and the old certainties that had sheltered me crumbled under scrutiny. It was in this manner that the man who was charged with sheltering and protecting this nation robbed me of my innocence.