ourheaven
Dec 9, 2012
Undergraduate / It's true, though, me being "unfocused"; Stanford (Intellectual Vitality Essay) [4]
I don't know if my essay is too scattered, or just plain bad. Some tips, please?
"She lacks focus. She's always here one second, there the next. The assignment was to draw her dream house. Instead she made a papier-mâchÊ model of it."
--Mrs. Fitzgerald; 4th grade teacher
(In my own defense, drawing a house was too boring. Maybe that would've been exciting if I were in, I don't know, 2nd grade?)
It's true, though, me being "unfocused". I've felt around the dark for a light switch in a vast expanse of knowledge, but all I found were some dust bunnies and the occasional spider. What if that old hag (Mrs. Fitzgerald) was right?
Then came the late night chats with my mom that led to the more-than-a-few-years-late mental growth spurt. She and I would sit on the couch on quiet nights over tea and snacks, talking about whatever came to mind. We talked about her childhood (of course she was a star student). Then we would talk about my future, what I would do with my life.
I remember she said, "I know you don't think it's a good thing, how you have so many interests. But it's OK. In the end, they all converge into one thing - you."
I told her about how I skipped over math homework and went straight to the 'Problems Plus' section in the textbook to see how many I could get right in 20 minutes. Later, we'd laugh over how my Cello teacher assigned one piece to practice, and I came back the next week with six, practiced to perfection (four of which were by Beethoven). "Once," I told her, "I saw a diagram for a string of Christmas lights in my Physics textbook. Remember how you dug out our broken Christmas lights, and found out they worked again? I did that."
Eventually, I came to a slow realization that passion for knowledge doesn't have to be present in just ONE place or ONE subject. To me, it was everywhere - in my schoolwork, my cello, my oil paints. Thanks to mom, I know it's OK to love engineering and art both at the same time. It's the fact that I'm learning, that I'm creating myself, that matters most.
You can suck on that, you old hag.
I don't know if my essay is too scattered, or just plain bad. Some tips, please?
"She lacks focus. She's always here one second, there the next. The assignment was to draw her dream house. Instead she made a papier-mâchÊ model of it."
--Mrs. Fitzgerald; 4th grade teacher
(In my own defense, drawing a house was too boring. Maybe that would've been exciting if I were in, I don't know, 2nd grade?)
It's true, though, me being "unfocused". I've felt around the dark for a light switch in a vast expanse of knowledge, but all I found were some dust bunnies and the occasional spider. What if that old hag (Mrs. Fitzgerald) was right?
Then came the late night chats with my mom that led to the more-than-a-few-years-late mental growth spurt. She and I would sit on the couch on quiet nights over tea and snacks, talking about whatever came to mind. We talked about her childhood (of course she was a star student). Then we would talk about my future, what I would do with my life.
I remember she said, "I know you don't think it's a good thing, how you have so many interests. But it's OK. In the end, they all converge into one thing - you."
I told her about how I skipped over math homework and went straight to the 'Problems Plus' section in the textbook to see how many I could get right in 20 minutes. Later, we'd laugh over how my Cello teacher assigned one piece to practice, and I came back the next week with six, practiced to perfection (four of which were by Beethoven). "Once," I told her, "I saw a diagram for a string of Christmas lights in my Physics textbook. Remember how you dug out our broken Christmas lights, and found out they worked again? I did that."
Eventually, I came to a slow realization that passion for knowledge doesn't have to be present in just ONE place or ONE subject. To me, it was everywhere - in my schoolwork, my cello, my oil paints. Thanks to mom, I know it's OK to love engineering and art both at the same time. It's the fact that I'm learning, that I'm creating myself, that matters most.
You can suck on that, you old hag.