clhpeterson
Dec 22, 2011
Undergraduate / 'incapable of monogamy' - Personal Statement - Intellectual Promiscuity [2]
I was recently rejected from my first-choice school and am thus trying to optimize all parts of the application that are in my control. Below is the personal statement that I used for my application to Stanford. If anyone could give constructive feedback, it would be greatly appreciated. One critique that I have received thus far is that it is not "personal" enough. Do others agree with this? Again, thank you for taking the time to read/comment on my essay.
" I am incapable of monogamy. My current love affairs: math, physics, and the violin. I feel no shame for my apparent perfidy to biology, Classics, music composition, and all the rest; for I know of the capacity for passion to rekindle and for old lovers to become new sweethearts.
I have always been promiscuous in my interests and endeavors, for I have always been intrigued by everything. As a child, back when I believed in infinity and shuddered at impossibility, I focused my ardor on these amorous undertakings as long as progress was guaranteed and no new flirtation stole my attention. I have taken the lead with innumerable dance partners: I have jived with gymnastics, lindy-hopped with left-handedness, sambaed with the saxophone, foxtrotted with figure skating, promenaded with poetry, mamboed with music composition, tangoed with typing, and jitterbugged with Japanese. Each consort has been as seductive as the last, and though some made better partners than others, each gambol has uniquely contributed to my development as a thinker: I can do a backflip, write with both hands, appreciate quality saxophone playing, ice skate backwards, contrast my present emotional being with the temperament implicit in the words and melodies of my compositions, type at 100 wpm, and recognize a few dozen Kanji. Even as I grew, the same passion for variety dictated my decisions; I have enrolled in the most challenging and eclectic classes and activities: Social/Ballroom Dancing, Cognitive Neuroscience, Musical Theatre, Latin Literature, Pole Vaulting, Debate, World Religions, Volcanology, etc. As the old adage reads, I have become a "jack of all trades," but there is more to this proverb than this one line.
Until ninth grade, my love affairs impulsively proceeded, unhindered and unseasoned; it was in freshman year that I discovered the wrath of a spurned lover firsthand in the form of Multivariable Calculus - and I subsequently discovered the latter portion of the "jack of all trades" phrase: "master of none." I pressed forward through the pain of an injured pride and a metaphorical "broken heart", I told myself and my lovers: "it's nothing, really," but I questioned my worth and ability. Especially at my current school, the level of accomplishment derived from a lifelong singular devotion is poignantly astounding when contrasted with my generalist competence. I asked: "Has my life thus far been wasted in intellectual polyamory?". Perhaps.
Perhaps not! Though convalescence lasted the entirety of sophomore and junior years, I have come to value my latitude of knowledge and breadth of faculty. I am not a polymath, but I am not a dilettante either. My courtships are more than casual let-me-buy-you-dinner-and-we'll-see-what-happens', for I have proficiently embraced a variety of fields: physics, biology, math, Latin, swimming, tumbling, computer science, et al. I now recognize that no subject is an island, no discovery is trivial, and no idea is provincial. Each branch of knowledge is often surrounded by arbitrary boundaries, given a vacuous name, and taught separately from the rest, but I refuse to accept such delineations! - I am interested in the interdisciplinary: where mathematical formulae become the foundations of physics, and the quantum behavior of electrons dictates molecular bonding - where chemical properties of neurotransmitters transform into psychological patterns that give rise to the cognition that enables us to question it all in the first place. How can I explore the fringes of informational inventories we call "subjects", teasing out innovations and revelations, if I weren't enchanted with all things? I shall forever choose to continue my intellectually polygamous lifestyle, fall in love with novel areas of study, view "settling down" as the enemy, and sew together the fringes artificially separating my relationships. In this way I shall eternally pursue a love affair with the Truth that lies at the boundaries between all knowledge, and:
"Though I am a jack-of-all-trades, master of none,
I am well on my way to being master of some,
Certainly better than a master of one.""
I was recently rejected from my first-choice school and am thus trying to optimize all parts of the application that are in my control. Below is the personal statement that I used for my application to Stanford. If anyone could give constructive feedback, it would be greatly appreciated. One critique that I have received thus far is that it is not "personal" enough. Do others agree with this? Again, thank you for taking the time to read/comment on my essay.
" I am incapable of monogamy. My current love affairs: math, physics, and the violin. I feel no shame for my apparent perfidy to biology, Classics, music composition, and all the rest; for I know of the capacity for passion to rekindle and for old lovers to become new sweethearts.
I have always been promiscuous in my interests and endeavors, for I have always been intrigued by everything. As a child, back when I believed in infinity and shuddered at impossibility, I focused my ardor on these amorous undertakings as long as progress was guaranteed and no new flirtation stole my attention. I have taken the lead with innumerable dance partners: I have jived with gymnastics, lindy-hopped with left-handedness, sambaed with the saxophone, foxtrotted with figure skating, promenaded with poetry, mamboed with music composition, tangoed with typing, and jitterbugged with Japanese. Each consort has been as seductive as the last, and though some made better partners than others, each gambol has uniquely contributed to my development as a thinker: I can do a backflip, write with both hands, appreciate quality saxophone playing, ice skate backwards, contrast my present emotional being with the temperament implicit in the words and melodies of my compositions, type at 100 wpm, and recognize a few dozen Kanji. Even as I grew, the same passion for variety dictated my decisions; I have enrolled in the most challenging and eclectic classes and activities: Social/Ballroom Dancing, Cognitive Neuroscience, Musical Theatre, Latin Literature, Pole Vaulting, Debate, World Religions, Volcanology, etc. As the old adage reads, I have become a "jack of all trades," but there is more to this proverb than this one line.
Until ninth grade, my love affairs impulsively proceeded, unhindered and unseasoned; it was in freshman year that I discovered the wrath of a spurned lover firsthand in the form of Multivariable Calculus - and I subsequently discovered the latter portion of the "jack of all trades" phrase: "master of none." I pressed forward through the pain of an injured pride and a metaphorical "broken heart", I told myself and my lovers: "it's nothing, really," but I questioned my worth and ability. Especially at my current school, the level of accomplishment derived from a lifelong singular devotion is poignantly astounding when contrasted with my generalist competence. I asked: "Has my life thus far been wasted in intellectual polyamory?". Perhaps.
Perhaps not! Though convalescence lasted the entirety of sophomore and junior years, I have come to value my latitude of knowledge and breadth of faculty. I am not a polymath, but I am not a dilettante either. My courtships are more than casual let-me-buy-you-dinner-and-we'll-see-what-happens', for I have proficiently embraced a variety of fields: physics, biology, math, Latin, swimming, tumbling, computer science, et al. I now recognize that no subject is an island, no discovery is trivial, and no idea is provincial. Each branch of knowledge is often surrounded by arbitrary boundaries, given a vacuous name, and taught separately from the rest, but I refuse to accept such delineations! - I am interested in the interdisciplinary: where mathematical formulae become the foundations of physics, and the quantum behavior of electrons dictates molecular bonding - where chemical properties of neurotransmitters transform into psychological patterns that give rise to the cognition that enables us to question it all in the first place. How can I explore the fringes of informational inventories we call "subjects", teasing out innovations and revelations, if I weren't enchanted with all things? I shall forever choose to continue my intellectually polygamous lifestyle, fall in love with novel areas of study, view "settling down" as the enemy, and sew together the fringes artificially separating my relationships. In this way I shall eternally pursue a love affair with the Truth that lies at the boundaries between all knowledge, and:
"Though I am a jack-of-all-trades, master of none,
I am well on my way to being master of some,
Certainly better than a master of one.""