Undergraduate / *WHO RUNS THE WORLD?* - TUFTS optional supplement essay [11]

Hey there!
I have the tufts supplement due tonight. It has an optional essay part. I need help reviewing/editing it. Please give any suggestion/correction or critique. And as always, BE BRUTAL. :)

Prompt : 3) Celebrate your nerdy side. (250 - 500 words)

Response:

Modern science has changed the way we perceive life and nature. The theory of Evolution has long inspired my grey-cells and left me daydreaming for hours. It makes my love for Biology deeper still. The theory has inspired me to write this poem which shows how all of us are the progeny of a bundle of organic chemicals that suddenly came to life billions of years ago.

I sit here in the park on my favourite tree,
Inspired by this famous theory
Which says that you, me and all of us
Come from a ball as small as a speck of dust.

Cells, as they call it, are what we are talking about
Formed eons ago in a primordial soup of organically rich compounds.
Certainly odd, don't you think?
How this 'ball' suddenly came to life...
First came the R, then the NA, and that's how you get RNA
But no one liked it as much as the all time popular DNA.
Natural Selection they say was the cause of this sudden change,
Making the Rs less common but giving the Ds much of a gain.

Cell division and expansion gave rise to numerous cells,
That covered our planet in numbers no one could tell.
First came Prokayotes, Chemooautotrophs and others with fancy names
And some of them exist, even till this very day!
Time goes on but things move slow,
So do not get any more bored.
Let's move on and forward the clock
Tick-tock, tick-tock and here we stop.

Few million years have now passed
And our cells have worked very hard,
Picking up many new traits
The Cyanobacteria, we call them, know to reduced water straight.
But oops! They did it again,
The cells have made a big mistake.
The oxygen they produce as waste product from water
Will kill them without telling them about the matter.
So new cells rise and life moves on
In the race of evolution, Eukaryotes have certainly won.
They give rise to multicellularity and reproduction
That have sped up the rate of evolution.
The accumulated oxygen dissolves iron in the oceans and lakes
Forming iron ore that allows us to construct buildings great.
The ozone layer now allows the life
To start colonizing the lands without any plight.
So come the Fungi and the Alga
Followed by the Porifera and Antozoa.

Life keeps becoming complex still
The evidence we see in the fossils.
Fish rule the seas, Aves dominate air
Leaving the Reptiles and Mammals with the lands to care.
The timeline adds more groups and classes
And our Classification Table of living keeps growing like wild grasses!

So where do we come? You may ask
But solving this confusion of cells and tables was not an easy task
We are Homo Sapiens of the class Primate
Who believe that we run the entire Planet.
But let me remind you what we are inside -
Not only are we siblings of the same origin but a mere assortment of same cells packed tight. (506 words)

How well do you think this answers the prompt? I probably cannot show my love for Biology in any other way. It didn't turn out exactly as I had planned, but I'm still happy with it. Please tell me what you fell? Thanks a ton! :) I'll help back definitely.

Undergraduate / 'individuality and self-exploration' - Why Oberlin College? [3]

I think I am crazy. At least I've been told I'm crazy, just about as many times as Norman Bates talks to his dead mother in the movie, "Psycho" (so apt). This is because,

I sit all night long watching Animal Planet and mockumentaries on Dragons. I read till my eyes hurt and cry for sleep. Some books one might find in my bookshelf are World War Z, Rebecca, The Kite Runner, Sophie's World, and The Diary of a Wimpy Kid (you may wonder about my eclectic reading choices). Midnight snacking is my favourite bedtime hobby. Though I cannot go long without losing all the calories I put on by going for my regular jogs and dance class. In addition to being an avid anime buff and a big sci-fi junkie who spends hours reading about possibilities of extra-terrestrial life, I manage to find just about enough time to complete my work. I love studying what I like especially Biology and anything space related, a quality my friends find rather unsettling and to an extent annoying.

Above all, I believe in doing things that I love and that womb chairs are the best spots to catch sleep in. So for all of my above mentioned traits, I feel a deep connection to Oberlin College. After learning about Oberlin, I fervently perused through the college site, devoured the official blog, and stalked Oberlin on every social networking medium possible. The more I learnt about the college, the more I fell in love with its quirky and intellectually charged atmosphere. It excites me to read about ExCo that is yet another learning platform for an Obie which combines fun and learning.

Oberlin celebrates individuality and self-exploration. That's what makes Oberlin my premier college choice. All I dream now is about is about acorns, womb chairs, white squirrels and even the freaky, obese Orange Squirrel that roams the grasses of Tappan Square!

Hi there, I just finished writing this. Please help me edit. Do I show my interest in Oberlin well? Please feel free to offer any advice or suggestions. Thanks a ton for reading!

Undergraduate / By dint forging does one become a Blacksmith [NEW]

Prompt: "Rigorous reasoning is crucial in mathematics, and insight plays an important secondary role these days. In the natural sciences, I would say that the order of these two virtues is reversed. Rigor is, of course, very important. But the most important value is insight--insight into the workings of the world. It may be because there is another guarantor of correctness in the sciences, namely, the empirical evidence from observation and experiments."

"C'est en forge ant qu'on devient forgeron."(By dint forging does one become a Blacksmith.)
This was what my French teacher said to me after my disappointment over not being able to express myself with clarity after months of working hard at speaking French better. I knew all my grammar rules, and my vocabulary was adequate. Then why was it that I was unable form a clear picture of what she wished to express? My strong acquaintance with English, Marathi and Hindi failed to help me in this prospect.

I reflected on the axiom all night, trying to figure out what it meant by myself. It was as if all I required was a little pondering upon before the meaning of the proverb became clearer to me. Practice makes perfect! So simply and beautifully put. Such is the beauty of language that it allows us to express ourselves in ways so unique. I realized that the problem lied not in my insufficient diction, rather in my pedantic approach towards learning an entirely different manner of perceiving and expressing.

In science, I learnt that black is the most optimal to absorb most part of the visible electromagnetic spectrum. This idea is aptly used in the design for photovoltaic cells which are completely black to absorb large amounts of energy. Then why were plants green and not black? Wouldn't black be a more efficient energy absorber? It seemed to me like evolution had made a wrong choice of colour. My reasoning had again left me perplexed rather than settled.

Learning requires two things: Knowledge and Reasoning. But there is a third thing between knowledge and reasoning called insight. Whether it is a science or a language, insight has always been my best friend out of the three. Even if it may not explain why plants are green, at least it allows me to realize that they could have been black.

Do you think I answered the prompt well? Do I stick to it or sound tangential or diffused? Please be harsh and I'm welcome to any suggestions/corrections. Thanks a ton! :)

Undergraduate / 'What is home' - Bowdoin - Connection to place [3]

My essay is due tonight, please help me edit anything extraneous. And please tell me what you feel about the essay. Be harsh if needed. Thanks a lot for your help!

Bowdoin students and alumni often cite world-class faculty and opportunities for intellectual engagement, the College's commitment to the Common Good, and the special quality of life on the coast of Maine as important aspects of the Bowdoin experience. Reflecting on your own interests and experiences, please comment on one of the following:

1. Intellectual engagement
2. The Common Good
3. Connection to place

Word Limit: 250 words

We were like nomads, moving place to place - making each new city our home. This was how my family lived for most part of my childhood. Thus, I could not call a certain place "home" for long enough. Even though we moved often, I still had enough time to gather many memories without having to feel uprooted or fragmented.

So what is home?
For me, it is in the smell of my mother's dals and curries; in her embarrassing yet endearing jokes and the warmth of her comforting hug. It is my intellectual discussions with Dad; and in the silence and sternness of his disciplinarian nature. Home is my fights with my brother over toys in the McDonald's Happy Meal. It is our bonding over the wannabe attempts to be the next gourmet critique by ravaging the city's restaurants and fast food joints. Home is where I made new friends. Delhi or Mumbai or Pune, it made no difference. Home does not have to be something tangible or concrete; 'Home' to me is the amorphous bundle of memories I hold. They are what made me who I am today. They are the strong connection I have to the people I love and the places I lived in. And yet again, as I move ahead in life and strive to move away for college, I will add to my collection innumerable and invaluable memories. And no other place seems as right as Bowdoin for this.

This is about 244 words. Does it work well to address the prompt? Thanks again! :)