Undergraduate / Planning, worrying, and executing - Georgia Tech /"Best advice I've ever received" [4]

Essay for undergraduate admission to Georgia Institute of Technology
PROMPT: What is the best advice you ever received and did you follow it?

In any endeavor, there are three crucial phases: planning, worrying, and executing. Each is absolutely essential, and although their order and duration may vary, omitting a single one of them is sufficient to ensure your failure. That isn't the real danger though. The thing that derails more endeavors than anything else is allowing any two of the three to overlap.

This was a piece of advice that I heard somewhere in my sophomore year, and for the life of me I couldn't tell you where I heard it. Regardless, I've found it to be one of the most profound and unexpected truths I've ever heard, and it's had a massive impact on my life, particularly upon how I've approached projects and problems. Keep in mind that the terms above are used loosely: "planning" could be literally drawing schematics for a robot arm, or it could be studying for a challenging test.

You see, early in life I (and many other people I knew) had approached most endeavors in a totally ineffective manner. Often times I would find myself worrying about an endeavor while I was in the process of laying out initial plans. Frequently I would begin worrying about the outcome of a project while in the midst of essaying it. Sometimes I would utterly neglect to plan for an endeavor, or - worse still and infinitely more embarrassing - find that I had lacked the courage to even attempt it. All of these activities were, as I realized midway through sophomore year, completely contrary to the advice I had just received. The most astonishing part about the whole epiphany was that it made immediate sense.

The first two parts of the counsel are intuitive: there are certain steps to go through to complete an endeavor, and failing to do one will nearly always cause you to fail. The third is less obvious, yet it makes sense when thought about. Consider the combinations. Planning while simultaneously executing is a disaster - it's fairly equivalent to entirely neglecting the planning phase. It is flying by the seat of your pants and succeeding through nothing but instinct and prayer (or more likely just falling on the seat of your pants). Worrying while planning is a bad idea as well: it destroys your focus and can cause you to take an inordinate amount of time to come up with even a rough plan. Even worse however is worrying while you are trying to put your endeavor into action: it will undermine all the hard work you put into planning and make you doubt yourself when self-confidence is most important. It will cause you to make mistakes and use bad judgement, and will shatter your focus. Needless to say, doing all three at the same time is as destructive as all these effects combined.

For example, let's apply this to something as simple and commonplace as a mathematics exam. Planning corresponds to studying, worrying is, well, still just worrying, and executing is actually sitting down and taking the test. If you neglect to study, there's a good chance you'll fail (assuming you're an average student). If you neglect to worry, you'll become cocksure and probably neglect to study. If you neglect to execute, well, you haven't taken the test and will therefor automatically fail. If you worry and study at the same time, your focus will be shattered and you won't get nearly as much out of the studying as you might have otherwise. If you worry whilst taking the test, your focus will be shattered and you'll run out of time while constantly weighing options over in your mind, unsure of your knowledge. Studying while taking the test is logically forbidden in this scenario, but you can see how it wouldn't work out well.

The other hidden piece of advice in this statement is perhaps even more intriguing than the statement as a whole: that worry and self-doubt are not only essential, but good. Worry and doubt are the great sparks of planning, their predecessor. Without worry, it is easy to imagine that one would not feel compelled in the least to go to any great lengths planning their endeavor. Without doubt, one would feel no reason to go through the cycles of reconsidering and refactoring that, while potentially time-consuming, inevitably result in a better and more refined product than would otherwise be produced.

Since receiving it, I've taken this advice to heart - and would have been a fool not to. I may never recall who to credit for the amazing counsel above, but notwithstanding I thank them for saving me from myself. The overlap of worry with planning and executing was the primary concern for myself, and since the moment when I came to grasp the implication of that overlap, I've resolved to banish worry from my mind whenever I'm planning for or acting on an endeavor. The effects are noticeable as well. I have more concentration and drive when working on my robot arm, or taking a test, or writing an essay like this one. Perhaps that's what makes this advice so valuable in my mind: I've seen it work first-hand.

Undergraduate / Christianity, a part of my life; Common App - Person with significant influence [6]

Prompt: Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.

Christianity is something that has always been a part of my life. I was born to two devout Christian parents, who raised me as a devout Christian myself. I was taught all the core values of Christianity, went to church every Sunday, and learned every basic concept of the story of Jesus and God. I entered high school safe, firm, and confident in my faith, and (so I thought) ready to defend it.

Needless to say, I was wrong. When I entered high school I entered a world that was not just hostile to my belief, but had gathered numerous convincing arguments against it and general problems with it. Over the span of my freshman year my belief which I had thought to be sturdy was shaken very deeply. As the assertions of my peers began to seep under my skin I developed very serious doubts about my faith. I questioned how a good and all-powerful God could allow such evil as we all witness to exist in the world. I questioned how we could really be sure that Jesus had performed miracles, had been crucified, and had risen from the grave. I questioned why God seemed so absent in my life. By the time I reached my junior year I was almost completely unsure of where I stood. My old Christian faith had spent the last two years having massive holes poked in it, but on the other hand atheism was completely unappealing to me; it carried with it an air of pointlessness and hopelessness that I simply detested. At the same time, I was becoming more and more engrossed in engineering and moving towards a more objective and reason-based mindset, a mindset which was no longer satisfied by the tales of love and devotion that mainstream Christianity uses to convince its followers.

Early in my junior year I received a rather remarkable book. It was titled "Mere Christianity", and written by C. S. Lewis, a man who I would say without a doubt has had more influence upon me than any other. Lewis presented to me (through the proxy of the book) one very simple and revolutionary notion: that not only is Christianity reasonable, in the right light it makes a lot more sense than any other religion, including atheism. "Mere Christianity" took a very simple approach to the problem of my doubt. It started from the beginning and walked me through the reasoning behind God's existence. I realized that even though mainstream Christianity fails in many regards, logical atheism fails in many more, particularly concerning the concept of objective morality. Not only did C. S. Lewis teach me the rational argument for God, he taught me how to think rationally, and for that I owe him everything. Thanks to C. S. Lewis, I now know how to stand up and confidently defend myself in a room full of doubters - and have done just that many times since.

Undergraduate / "I'm an engineer" - CMU CommonApp supplement [NEW]

I'm an engineer, I always have been, and I always will be. Science and math have always impressed and intrigued me, but what impresses and intrigues me even more is something as seemingly simple as the computer I'm typing this application on. A scientist discovered the principles of light manipulation behind the LCD, discovered how electricity works, discovered the semi-conductive material for the logic boards. An engineer was the one who took the bits and pieces the scientist discovered and turned them into something the world could use, and I find that infinitely more impressive.

However, engineering is more than a profession. It is more than a hobby or a thing to do. Engineering is an entire mindset, and it encompasses an entire worldview. Scientists are the ones who go and discover things. Engineers are the ones who go and create things that people can actually use. Engineering is a mindset of utility, one that asks three simple questions: "What works?", "What doesn't work?", and "What's next now that I've determined that?" The engineer is the one who constantly seeks out new challenges, and then constantly seeks to solve them as best he can with the tools available to him. Engineering is the best competition - the one where there is nothing but yourself, your tools, and your intellect against a monumental challenge. Sometimes you'll lose, but when you succeed the feeling of elation is unparalleled by anything I've ever experienced.

I've always loved engineering any any form. Since my earliest days my favorite toys were those I could build with, whether they were the traditional Legos, or the Erector sets I got when I was older. Why I was eight, my father introduced me to computer programming through a beginner's "language" called Scratch, and the passion he kindled has never gone out. In my sophomore year I took an introductory course to engineering and there discovered robotics, the perfect blending of both construction and programming that I've come to love so much. I am currently the sole robotics expert on Conestoga's Science Olympiad team, and the robotic arm I have built has taken 4th in a regional competition, and 6th in all-states. I expect it to perform even better this year.

However, all this isn't enough to convince me that Carnegie Mellon is the best institution for me. Sure, CMU has a top-notch engineering program, and it widely considered to be the best available university for computer science, but there is a plethora of other universities just as widely renowned as CMU for their engineering and computer science programs. Why then, should I choose Carnegie Mellon?

Engineering is my passion, but in order to really succeed and go far in this world I believe that a person needs to have a wider background, a broader base that offers more stability and general knowledge. Although my interest in the arts doesn't come close to paralleling my passion for engineering, I do have a fondness for music, good art, and other such things. I play cello as a hobby, and have gotten very good at it through practice and hard work, and little bit of talent as well. I'm not half-bad a drawing, and I love a good game of Ultimate Frisbee.

Carnegie Mellon is the only university I've found that provides an excellent engineering program, yet still holds its own when arts and other activities come up to the plate, and this is why I would absolutely love to attend. At Carnegie Mellon, I know I'll get the engineering education I so desperately want, but I also know that I'll emerge with a little bit of knowledge of everything else out there in the world.

Undergraduate / I find myself surrounded by "model students"; Common App [12]

The Common Application and most other applications have a space where you can upload or type in something additional in case you feel you haven't been able to accurately represent yourself. I was thinking about submitting something like this. Specifically, I'm targeting MIT if it makes any difference.

Here's the text...

I'd like to use this space to drop the formalities and do a little bit of straight talk, because that's what I do best. I hope that you can take what I say at face value, and that this doesn't constitute some sort of admissions suicide. I'm a person, not a paragraph.

When I look around myself at school, I find myself surrounded by "model students". They are the students with perfect SAT scores, with 4.0 unweighted GPAs, and with lists of extracurriculars so long that they make your eyes bleed. They spend all their days going through the motions of high school. They work like slaves to earn little numbers. They join every club they can just to get it on their record. They study day and night to earn perfect scores on standardized tests. At the end of the day, they come out of high school with stellar scores and pristine transcripts to hand to you, the admissions officers.

I haven't done all these things. I haven't worked my rear off to earn amazing grades just for the sake of earning them. I haven't jam packed my weeks with clubs and extracurriculars that I don't care about. I haven't spent hours studying for the SAT. That much is evident enough to anybody looking at my statistics. My numbers are good, but they're not perfect, and not really amazing for the area that I come from.

I spent my time in high school learning. I spent it pursuing the things I loved, and doing everything I could to find out more about them. I didn't earn great grades in science and math classes because I spent inordinate amounts of time studying. I earned them because I have a great talent and love for math and science. I didn't join science olympiad and build a robotic arm that took 6th place in states (and will do even better this year) so that it would go on my transcript. I did it because I love working with robotics and building something with my own hands that can accomplish a task. I didn't teach myself the contents of AP Calculus BC over the summer because I thought you might be impressed by it. I taught it to myself because Calculus BC was a prerequisite for Multivariable Calculus, and I desperately wanted to be in that class and learn everything that it had to offer. I didn't pour 40% of my summer into writing Minecraft server plugins because it showed my programming skill. I poured that time in because I have a deep passion for programming, and there wasn't anything else I would have rather spent that time on.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is something like this: at some point in this whole admissions process you (or one of your colleagues) is going to have to make a choice between me, and a "model student" with all best scores, the best grades, the best extracurriculars, and maybe even some special connections. The only thing I have to put against him is me as a person, the one who is still talking straight to you 4 paragraphs later. I love what I do, I'm incredibly good at what I do, and I want to keep doing what I do.

I remain humbly,
[my_name]