Undergraduate /
I'm not a man of enormous wealth; What do you add to Rice? [3]
Full question: A. 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.)
Do you think I should tone it down? I think I'm coming through as extremely sarcastic. But other than that, any general/ specific issues?
I'm a bisexual, semi-libertarian, vegetarian, hard-rock listening, nature-loving Eagle Scout who loves to cook and watches TV semi-fanatically. Whew.
Now that introductions are out of the way, please allow me to introduce myself. I'm not a man of enormous wealth, but if I can say it without sounding arrogant, I am one who can taste. I'm famous for it. And there goes the requisite ice breaker, so I can get on to talking about myself and how particularly awesome I am.
Now, culturally, I am like many Americans. I come from a family where one of my parents is more religious than I am, and I allow myself to be shepherded to one or two big celebrations a year in order to appease her. Of course, for me its Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, but the general intent is the same. Just to get it out there: I'm thoroughly agnostic. I don't care much if God exists or not, and the jury's still out in my mind if religion is a good thing. But there is one thing about religion, specifically Judaism, which I do appreciate. Every Friday night is a holiday- the Sabbath. In my family, that means everyone sits down together and eats a delicious meal. It serves as a way to connect a family together through a shared activity. It's also instilled in me a lifetime love of cooking. It's like therapy and stress relief rolled into one, and it is something I do intend to continue doing, if in any way possible.
Now comes the part of the essay that gets a little bit sad. You see, when I was a baby, I was left by my parents at the Grand Canyon. My parents realized I was gone 2.34 minutes later, found me, and divorced sixteen years later. Of course, that has not particularly influenced my perspective, other than leading me to believe life is a vast and hopeless wasteland that we all enter and leave cold, naked, and afraid. What's more important is to talk about the differences between them and how that has influenced me. Ignoring personality issues (which, frankly, are none of your business and I'm really not sure why you're asking) my parents are very different philosophically. My mom is a socialist, vegetarian, Orthodox Jewish social worker, and my dad is a carnivorous, libertarian, atheist businessman who's big on pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Both are big on emphasizing their own beliefs, and they tend to cancel each other out. Consequently, I'm currently a collection of bizarre non-sequiturs and seeming contradictions due to having formed my own opinions on basically everything. The exceptions are synchronized swimming and curling: no one in my family can grasp their elusive mysteries. Just as a short list: I read Atlas Shrugged and then proceeded on to the Bible. I'm pro-choice, but I view abortion as murder. I'm team Bella.
Perhaps most importantly I've got an international perspective: I've been to Canada. Also, ever since 2009, I have been talking to adults and teenagers in nearly 30 other countries almost every day. It's because of an online game called travian, and, yes, I am going to explain why this is not just me talking about a hobby. Basically, travian is designed to be a team game, with alliances ranging anywhere from 30 to 300 accounts, with some accounts having more than one person on them. I've been in a particular alliance for about two and a half years, and we use Skype to communicate. There's on average, maybe 150 people in the alliance. Now here's what I've been getting to: only about half the alliance is American. The rest are Australian, New Zealanders, Canadian, Indian, Iranian, Turkish, Norwegian, Israeli, anywhere where people speak English. And, it turns out, throwing 100 or so people, from dozens of countries, connected by one interest, into a particular Skype room leads to people shouting at each other a lot about basically anything. I've logged on to find a Norwegian socialist debating an American tea partier about the use of GM crops in Germany and Colorado. Or an Australian engineering professor, a strange Danish man, and an Israeli student vigorously debating Israel's foreign policy. And at this point, you're probably like "So he spends a possibly unhealthy amount of time on the internet, that's... well, normal, actually." But here's why I'm even bothering to bring this up at all: I honestly can't think of a better way to learn world opinion on various issues. I also can't think of a way to have your own opinions challenged more effectively. An uninformed opinion is a death sentence in an argument with intelligent people who have access to the internet. Frequent arguments with people from all around the world have tremendously shaped many of my own opinions, especially those that were very America-centric. Also, I was introduced to Iron Maiden and the Levelers, which would have been worth the sticker price alone. Overall, it's probably been one of the most educational parts of my life. I've discussed graduate theses on the role of females in Arthurian Legend, the importance of China in the world economy, and the economic troubles in Europe (with actual Europeans!). And, throughout it all, my grammars has survived intact.
And, now, dear reader, I believe our time together is at an end. And there's my perspective: An internationally aware person with strange beliefs about everything.
