Undergraduate / "My pragmatic perspective" - Rice Admission Essay [5]

The quality of Rice's academic life and the Residential College System are heavily influenced by the unique life experiences and cultural traditions each student brings. What perspective do you feel that you will contribute to life at Rice? (Most applicants are able to respond successfully in two to three double-spaced pages.)

About a year ago, my perspective dramatically changed. I used to seek an understanding of reality in itself. This goal took me on an intellectual adventure beginning with Plato's world of ideas, continued to religious claims of objectivity, and ended with a hodgepodge of new-age pseudo-science. My plan to study philosophy in my academic career evinced my Faustian thirst to understand. However, - even though I still read and appreciate philosophy and other related topics - because I continued to study and reflect on the significance of any form of objective understanding, I came to the personal conclusion that knowledge for the sake of understanding is not the best way to enrich my experience as a human. This progressive and mature shift broadened my passion for knowledge to include and focus on my passion for the great human disciplines (such as science, math, and modern philosophy). This shift reflects a part of my current perspective to use knowledge from many disciplines as a pragmatic tool, a way to understand and solve contemporary issues.

My nascent thirst for pragmatic knowledge immediately changed my actions and thoughts. For example, after expanding what I knew about ethics, biology, ecology, nutrition, physiology, and philosophy of the mind, my diet changed accordingly. For almost a year now - since my perspective changed - I have adopted and followed an ethical diet. This ethical diet includes not eating animal products (unless they are about to go to waste, or unless they were slaughtered humanely and out of necessity). My new perspective has changed my thoughts in that now, instead of pursuing an academic career in philosophy, my interests reside in using science to solve problems (specifically studying symbiotic relationships, especially of mychorizza, at the ecological and molecular level). My diet and intended academic pursuit reflect another part of my perspective, namely that as my knowledge continues to develop; my actions and thoughts change accordingly.

I aspire to accomplish goals in my life that are only accomplishable through my greatest efforts. However, I cannot achieve these meaningful yet difficult goals if time-consuming and selfish impulses stand in my way. Overcoming anything blockading me from my goal manifests the final part of my perspective (at least that I am describing). Self-overcoming poses a daily challenge to my life, a challenge that I have met so far when I expunged mindless entertainment from my life, such as television, video games, social gossip, unnecessary food and personal fantasies. While at Rice, I will combine my passion for pragmatic knowledge and my motivation to self-overcome in order to most efficiently use my time and energy to study and foster my interests, not to fulfill meaningless, selfish desires. I will contribute a multi-disciplined perspective to understanding and solving contemporary issues.

Any criticism is always appreciated! If you would like, I will criticize anybody's work who criticizes mine! (Constructively of course!!!)