Undergraduate /
"Single-eyed giant" - WoW essay: good or bad? [21]
Heres my common app essay, I am so behind, but I couldn't think of anything else that defines me:
A giant single-eyed ogre stands before me. His massive build towers a good twenty feet above the tip of my pointy helmet. I am shaken. The eight pieces of shiny jewel encrusted armor I wear do not seem to be able to protect me from the massive pieces of granite protruding fromthe beasts' claws. "I have to do this quest sometime," I say to myself. Gripping my shield tight and reaching for my Bloodmaw Magus-Blade, I feel rage filling up my head. With that, I charge head first into the monster's lair. I block, parry, and even manage to slash the monster a few times, but ten minutes into the fight, my team starts to falter; balls of fire and blades of ice are flying everywhere and the team has fallen into a chaotic disorder. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a teammate die under the foot of the ogre beast. "We have to run!" I hear. "No backing out now," I rallied, "We take him down now!" Blow by blow, the gargantuan brute droops, and at last, falls to the ground with a devastating crash.
In many ways, the way I live my life is similar to how I play my character in the computer game, World of Warcraft. In the game, I am a fierce warrior - one who charges into battle bravely, yet is strong and smart enough to survive there for the duration of the battle. In real life, I like to do the same. Many times, settling down and discussing strategies about taking the raid boss is vital, but beyond that, the best method to win is to charge headstrong into the fray. At the frontlines of the conflict, I like the experience of personally tackling the problems that I face. Whether it is a thirty feet tall ogre lord, or a fifteen page long research paper, directly embracing the difficulty is how I handle situations.
In my guild, I am the raid leader - the one who plans and orchestrates the high level dungeon raids. A high level raid is not an easy task to overcome. As the raid leader, I am able to manage my own character well, but at the same time, direct twenty-four other people to do their roles for the duration of a fifteen to twenty minute long fight. In the chaos, I am also able to decide instantly whether to back out or to continue the fight. Keeping my spell rotations in mind, I can still yell to the priest on the other side of the battleground to switch his healing spells and make more efficient use of his mana. Yet sometimes, when all else fails - when it is 3 AM, and I have only written ten pages of my paper and the ogre lord is only at half health while my team is half dead, I continue. It is not because I like playing ther hero. Instead, it is because I like to push myself beyond my boundaries, even if sometimes, the fight may fail, there only is one option to try again and do better. When this happens, and the challenge is overcome, I feel my sense of accomplishment.
