Undergraduate / UChicago Required Short Essay [6]

Question 1. How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to UChicago.

I want to be known as a friendly and useful person wherever I end up. I want to develop my mind as much as I can, and I improve best when surrounded by people with similar goals. Through the many emails and postcards, I've gained the impression that there is a community of friendly, witty, and intelligent individuals at UChicago.

Also at UChicago is a plethora of resources, from great professors to filled libraries. By immersing in studies as well as hanging out alongside people like and yet very different from myself in an environment built for the best learning, I can develop my goals while meeting people of many different backgrounds. After going to UChicago, I will have become more of an open-minded, well-rounded being, more ready than ever to take on anything the future throws at me.

Thanks for any comments! =)

Undergraduate / UChicago Required Essay: What does Play-doh have to do with Plato? [4]

I wrote my essay in a story format, since it says on the UChicago site that the essays can be all real, or complete fantasy. My story is partially real, with a lot of made-up stuff mixed into it. I was thinking of maybe adding a picture of a sculpture of Plato made by me at the end? But I'm not sure if they would appreciate an image...though they do allow graphs to be put into the essay if you write about their second prompt option...

Anyhow, here's my essay:

Essay Option 1: 'What does Play-Doh have to do with Plato'?
"Mommy look! Look what I made!" giggled a little Chinese girl, kneeling on a chair at the kitchen table. She was probably around 4 years old.

"Let's see...oh my, good job darling! This is very good," said the Mom. They looked at the little cat figure on the table, surrounded by other bits and pieces of play-doh. It was a maroon kitten, with a white scarf.

Thinking about the scarf, the Mom asked "why is the kitty wearing a scarf Stephi? It's still summer."
The little girl put on a serious face and said, "Because! It's hiding the line where the body and the head stick together. So the head won't fall off."

"Oh my...how...creative-Don't drink that, dear! That's the play-toh cup. Here's your juice," exclaimed the Mom.
Giggling, the little girl set down the play-doh container and picked up her juice instead. "Oopsie, thank you Mommy! It's play-DOH, not play-TOH, Mommy. Play-doh would taste yucky."

"Play-toh, hmm...like that one philosopher guy, Plato..." A teenage girl sat on her bed, busily working on a project. Packages of sculpting clay lay in a circular arrangement around her, along with various clay-working tools. They made a kind of nest.

Sunlight streamed in through the windows along the wall to her left, providing all the light she needed. Her laptop was on, playing Christmas music. As the girl worked, she hummed and sang along with the tunes being played.

"Deck the halls with boughs of holly...falalalala...lalalalaa...oh dear..." she seemed to have made a mistake in her project. "Hmm...how to fix this...lalala..." and she continued to work, busily shaping the clay into what she had in mind.

"It's like that one time..." she mumbled to herself, remembering her childhood.
"I broke it! Mommy, Daddy, I broke it! It's broken...it's so sad..." sobbed the little Chinese girl, holding the three pieces of a play-doh figure. Walking over, her parents patted her on the back, hugging her and telling her it'd be okay.

"Don't worry Stephi, we can fix it. It's not dry yet, see?" said her Mom, gently squeezing the kitten's tail. "We can put him back together."

"No we can't! There will be cracks all over! And it's a HER! She's a girl!" complained the girl, frustrated that she had broken her sculpture in the first place.

Eventually her parents convinced her that superglue would do the trick, since though the play-doh wasn't quite dry, it was hard enough not to mold together easily. They finished putting the kitten back together, and the little girl held the kitten gently in her hands, frowning. "What's wrong, dear?" asked her Dad.

"She's not a very happy kitty anymore...she has a broken face, and the scarf didn't make sure the head wouldn't fall off," she said, on the verge of tears again.

The teenager laughed. That was so long ago! Glancing down at her sculpture, she thought of the maroon kitten again. She was almost done correcting her mistake, and by the time she finished, there would be no sign that she had messed up at all.

"I wonder where that kitten is now...I think we gave it away, along with all the other animals I made when I was little. I wonder what Plato would have said, about the broken kitten," she thought, continuing to tweak her sculpture. Clay bits lay all over the old checker board she used as a work surface.

It was Christmas time, and the family was going to a holiday party at a friends' house. There was going to be a gift exchange, and the little girl was very excited. She was bringing a little stuffed animal to give away, put in a nice small box and wrapped, then tied with holiday ribbons.

All through dinner, she squirmed in her seat, wondering what she would get. There weren't any other children her age for her to play with, so she sat and daydreamed. Her thoughts wandered through the list of things she could wish for. A cute stuffed animal? A pretty bracelet? Maybe she would get something nice to put in her hair... She thought and thought, and when it came time to exchange presents, she had wound her hopes up very high.

I sighed. I'd finally finished my tiny sculpture of Plato's head. What did I get that Christmas again, many years ago? Oh right! A pack of play-doh! It was the travel size kind, with the tiny containers, all packaged nicely into a clear plastic tube. My parents had congratulated me on getting such a nice gift of "play-toh". Smiling, I looked down at my sculpture.

"Hey Plato, what would you say about that? Foreshadowing in real life?" Of course, there was no reply, since it was only my sculpture of Plato's head that I was talking to, not the real Plato. I imagined the sculpture of Plato in rainbow colors. Getting off of my bed, I went downstairs and past where my Dad was working on his computer, towards the garage. "Hey Dad? I'm gonna go out for a little bit. I need to go buy some play-doh, to make some colorful Platos."

Thanks for any comments! =)

Undergraduate / 'I want designing' - USC Freshman: Engineering [4]

There are two "essays". These are just one paragraph each, and I just wanna know if there are improvements I could make. Any helpful comments are appreciated. Thank you!

Here is the first one's prompt: Engineering leaders do more than just solve technical problems. What kinds of experiences, inside and outside of the classroom, would you want to explore to enhance your studies?

My response: Though I am undecided as to what kind of engineering I want to do, I know that I want designing to be a part of it. As a child I had this notion that engineering was only to do with math, computers, and guys. When I learned that there was much more to it than those three things, I was excited, mainly by the fact that there is room for artistic people. I also want to be able to have hands on experience, which would help me decide if what I chose is truly the best fit for me. To broaden my abilities and enhance my studying, I would like to take a drawing class, and find an internship opportunity. With these two experiences, I feel I would be much better prepared for the real world than without them.

The second prompt: Engineers have sometimes been stereotyped as "nerds" or "geeks." Do you embrace or reject that stereotype? Why?

My response: I was never a "geek", and only sort of a "nerd". I am not tech savvy, or math-crazy. However, a friend of mine who I can safely say is a nerd has welcomed me to "nerd-land" several times throughout the years in high school. A lot of my friends are hard workers, and they have inspired me to work hard as well. I consider myself a semi-nerd-someone who isn't widely known (among classmates) as a nerd, but who can and will work just as hard as someone who is widely known as a nerd. I visit "nerd-land" frequently, and am happy to be there.

Undergraduate / USC: 'Animation and Digital Arts' [3]

So this is a bit last minute since the deadline is December 1st...but any help/commentary would be absolutely wonderful!
This is only my first draft, and I feel like it is a little disorganized. Maybe I cover to much?
I also wonder, because the prompt says that the essay should be a page and a half but doesn't give spacing requirements...should I double space or single space? (It's currently 1.5 spaced in my word document and is a page and a half)

Here is the prompt:

The Cinematic Arts personal statement should reflect the applicant's individuality and explain why he or she would like to study
animation and digital arts at USC. The Animation Admission Committee will review this statement as a measure of the applicant's
creativity, intelligence, self-awareness, determination and vision. The statement should be a page and a half, and it should give the
committee a sense of the applicant's long-term goals and artistic ambitions.

And my essay:

I have been drawing since I could hold a crayon, and though those first drawings were not masterpieces, they were a start. I grew up drawing, coloring, then painting, sketching. I had my eyes set on becoming an artist. Then one day my parents decided to explain to me what they thought would be "better" in the real world: an engineer, or a professor, a doctor, a computer programmer-anything but an artist.

I couldn't understand why I wasn't allowed to become an artist, it was what I enjoyed doing. I wanted to be able to enjoy my job, not treat it as an uninteresting task or a terrifying endeavor. I tried to explain that I couldn't be a professor, tried to explain my fear of becoming a doctor but to no avail. Eventually I stopped trying to see myself as an artist. My parents supported my drawing, but only as a hobby-they never meant for me to go professional.

Some time later I began to consider going into a science field. To that, my parents approved, and I walked around thinking "I'm going to be a pharmacist when I grow up". I gave up drawing almost altogether.

One day, feeling frustrated with myself, I questioned myself about my future. Did I actually want to be a pharmacist, and did I truly feel no more connection to an activity that I had once felt was my life? I was surprised to discover the answer "no" floating in my mind. I took up a colored pencil and started sketching, trying to draw from a photo the subject I used to enjoy drawing the most-a horse. I scribbled and erased, marking up the paper, but no matter how I looked at it the shape did not look like a horse, or so I thought at the time. I became fed up with the picture, and told myself I would never become an artist-it was never meant to be.

I could feel it slipping away. My best friend since childhood. It felt like the art in me was dead, and could never be revived. A few days later, I decided to try again, because there were so many ideas in my head. I let the image in my mind guide my hand, rather than my eyes. It was only a sketch in my notes from school, but it was there, visible proof to myself that I could still draw, and that I did still enjoy art.

I started considering the possibility of having art in my future again. I managed to convince myself that there was a chance, and I knew I would be overjoyed if it were to become reality. I began sketching again, drawing frequently when I had time, designing and making things with my hands. There was such a happy feeling when I finished some project. I began wanting to try new things: sewing, sculpting, jewelry-making, animating, maybe even watercolor (a medium that I have never been able to say I am decent at).

In all of my years of art, I was never very interested in creating big paintings or drawings. Instead, I enjoyed making small pieces-little cartoony characters, sketches of animals, the occasional small portrait of a person. The cartoons. I have done a little bit of animating before, digitally drawing frame-by-frame and playing the images in a sequence. I was inspired by seeing small animations made by other people on an online virtual pet game/forum site that I was a member of for a short time.

Student artists like me would trade their artwork with other members for the virtual pets they wanted. In an effort to market my art better, I jumped into the popular bunch of artists trading small animations for user icons and message signatures. By reading through a few tutorials online, I started experimenting with the digital drawing program I had. My first animation, though choppy, was my pride and joy for the next week or so, as I tried figuring out ways to make my animating smoother, and add color.

Those little animations I did were fun to do, and I even used what I had figured out to create a small public service announcement for a short internship at Asian Media Access in the summertime. However, I didn't seriously consider animation as a possibility in college until I came across a cartoon that brought back memories of my childhood-My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Watching the first episode, I couldn't help thinking about how wonderful it would be if I were to be able to be a part of creating such a show. Sketching out adorable characters, making them move, being a part of a team that would bring each individual to life, and ultimately bringing smiles to other peoples' faces became my dream. I may not be the one to find a cure for a disease, but I will be trying my best to bring out happiness.

USC will give me the chance to develop my digital art and animating skills, with some of the newest technology and the philosophy that theory and practice go together. I will become well-rounded (something I believe is quite important) because USC makes sure that students at the School of Cinema understand how things work beyond their own area of study. At USC, I will be able to immerse myself in becoming the best I can be in my field, but also have knowledge in related fields, preparing myself for the real world.

Thank you!!!