beabeababy
Oct 20, 2011
Undergraduate / "Auto-didact" My Commonapp Essay [2]
college essay for common app. I need opinions on whether it's too boring/bibliographical/self-centered?
Beatrice Wedd's First Attempt at a College Essay
10/18/11
Up until a couple of years ago, my dining room table was what constituted a desk, and my parents and I were what constituted teachers. I was an autodidact who had seven siblings and lived on a farm in wonderfully rural, upstate New York. As you can imagine, life was never dull and there was always something to do. Upon entering tenth grade, I decided to join a Waldorf School in Ghent where my older sister Sophie had graduated two years previously to "try my hand" at a more formal education. I have been attending that school ever since then and have yet to be disappointed. Last year in eleventh grade, I had my doubts about staying in school, not because of the actual school, which I loved, but because of loving homeschooling just a little bit more. I chose to stay in the end.
Unfortunately and in no doubt due to the misinformed assumptions around it, homeschooling does not have the most respected reputation, although it is certainly gaining a more widespread appeal and generous recognition. Many are content with the mindset that a life without attending a school is a life without learning but I am decidedly not. I believe that when a child is left to his or her devices and given time and space, that that child will inevitably tire of fun and lethargy. That was my experience, and I spent most of my time in the company of books, journals, or my computer to write and research on, as a result. In the summer before eleventh grade, I had the time and freedom to add approximately two hundred pages to my collection of short stories, I am quite proud of that number; the actual content I am less proud of as it is, for the most part, romantic trash. This freedom that life at home gave me was heavenly, and I realized then how much I had missed it while at school. Not only freedom to process ideas, theories and concepts without homework breathing down the neck, and time at my fingertips to spend the day dreaming up a plot to a novel, or researching the implausible life of Charles Manson, but also learning how to manage my time, work independently and manage my own schedule. By the end of the summer, my bedside table had a three foot stack of classics, philosophy books, psychology books and literature books, all of them at a level above most of my peers.
I am attracted to the transformation of philosophies and ideas, and believe that this is partly due to the fact that I have had this sensitive, freeform upbringing where facility of thinking was encouraged. Ralph Waldo Emerson says it finely by stating simply that, "The best thing one can do in this world is to sidle quietly along without any inflexible philosophy." It doesn't serve anyone to be small-minded and selfish, the sooner the world realizes this, whether it's in reference to homeschooling or something else, the better.
college essay for common app. I need opinions on whether it's too boring/bibliographical/self-centered?
Beatrice Wedd's First Attempt at a College Essay
10/18/11
Up until a couple of years ago, my dining room table was what constituted a desk, and my parents and I were what constituted teachers. I was an autodidact who had seven siblings and lived on a farm in wonderfully rural, upstate New York. As you can imagine, life was never dull and there was always something to do. Upon entering tenth grade, I decided to join a Waldorf School in Ghent where my older sister Sophie had graduated two years previously to "try my hand" at a more formal education. I have been attending that school ever since then and have yet to be disappointed. Last year in eleventh grade, I had my doubts about staying in school, not because of the actual school, which I loved, but because of loving homeschooling just a little bit more. I chose to stay in the end.
Unfortunately and in no doubt due to the misinformed assumptions around it, homeschooling does not have the most respected reputation, although it is certainly gaining a more widespread appeal and generous recognition. Many are content with the mindset that a life without attending a school is a life without learning but I am decidedly not. I believe that when a child is left to his or her devices and given time and space, that that child will inevitably tire of fun and lethargy. That was my experience, and I spent most of my time in the company of books, journals, or my computer to write and research on, as a result. In the summer before eleventh grade, I had the time and freedom to add approximately two hundred pages to my collection of short stories, I am quite proud of that number; the actual content I am less proud of as it is, for the most part, romantic trash. This freedom that life at home gave me was heavenly, and I realized then how much I had missed it while at school. Not only freedom to process ideas, theories and concepts without homework breathing down the neck, and time at my fingertips to spend the day dreaming up a plot to a novel, or researching the implausible life of Charles Manson, but also learning how to manage my time, work independently and manage my own schedule. By the end of the summer, my bedside table had a three foot stack of classics, philosophy books, psychology books and literature books, all of them at a level above most of my peers.
I am attracted to the transformation of philosophies and ideas, and believe that this is partly due to the fact that I have had this sensitive, freeform upbringing where facility of thinking was encouraged. Ralph Waldo Emerson says it finely by stating simply that, "The best thing one can do in this world is to sidle quietly along without any inflexible philosophy." It doesn't serve anyone to be small-minded and selfish, the sooner the world realizes this, whether it's in reference to homeschooling or something else, the better.
