Undergraduate / "4'33"", "Body Composition", "Beyond Dust" Stanford Supplementals [2]

I wrote these today. They're rough drafts, but I have to submit in 3 days! Doing "Early Action" and "Arts Supplemental". Thank you all for constructive criticism.

Stanford students possess an intellectual vitality. Reflect on an idea or experience that has been important to your intellectual development. (100 to 250 words)

For four minutes and thirty-three seconds, if you were to sit silently - preferably with a working instrument - you would have fundamentally performed the most controversial composition in modern music, 4'33". Congratulations maestro.

But those 273 seconds are much more than absolute zero. Like molecules according to thermodynamics, people will make random, small, intrinsic movements. The room will hum, the house will creak, and the wind will pulse. Most importantly, our daydreams will take center stage and thoughts - the microphone. As I watched the silent violins in the acoustically-charged Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, one thought seemed to boom, as loud as an audible note.

Music is silence and sound, and silence and sound is everywhere.
When I listened to and played jazz, blues, classical, folk, and rock on five different instruments, I believed I was pushing the limits of being a musician. Even before the 4'33" epiphany, I already had a passion for hearing from life. I loved lectures and books on biology and physics, folklore and history, poetry and game theory. I only had an inkling of an idea that these subjects were important and intertwined.

I realized knowledge, like music, is infinitely expansive. I could learn in the schoolhouse, at the concert hall, and by the ocean - all through sounds and silences. As someone receptive enough, I realized every experience teaches and pools up in my head. In silence, they integrate into ideas and epiphanies. As I think alone, the quiet harmonies ring.

Virtually all of Stanford's undergraduates live on campus. Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate -- and us -- know you better. (100 to 250 words)

To illustrate every bit of me:
14% skeleton, with an exceptional backbone: Raised with strident, unaccepting parents. Entrenched in logical battles with friends about Palestine. Fought widespread cheating culture at school. Had two broken front teeth from skateboarding - yet still skateboarding.

12% fat, with a propensity to rebound: Note - had bout with anorexia, but healthily overcame. Was never tutored, yet rallies himself for A-grades and high test scores.

7% blood, hot with passion: Full of strong political opinions about environmental policies and subpar democracy. Saturated with drive for comprehensive study of science, language, and arts.

10% lean skin, with outward honesty: Joined Debate and Mock Trial to hone communication skills. Performed at "Drama Showcase" a personal dramatic work he wrote - to tears and applause.

46% muscle, with a strong heart: Reads personal stories of war and humaneness through Humans of New York. Keeps up with the world's death tolls stoically (meaning tries not to cry). Loses himself in guitar, drumming, and producing for 4-6 hours at a time. Lifts weights to 1.9 times of body weight.

2% brain, with prodigious activity: Produces philosophical ideas that have filled five notebooks. Well-read in subjects as varied as political science and gastronomy. Suffers incessantly from insatiable love of learning.

9% other things: Bakes the school's best cheesecakes and chocolate chip cookies. Active in Polyphasic Sleep Society. Uses music stand as standing desk. And made from fruits and vegetables.

In all, this makes me - varied, eccentric, and achieving. I hope we get along.

What matters to you, and why? (100 to 250 words)

Nothing we stock up will last when we're dust in the fields. So what matters?
A lot of bright friends have told me that they want to live their lives by making as much money, indulging in as much fun, and making as many experiences as can be possible in their few decades of life. I worried that what matters is something more.

In a world where the average person lives on less than $3,000 a year, where the average individual means much less than his or her fair share to the powerful, and where the average lifestyle can be ignored completely by the richest 1% (globally, those who live on $34,000 a year) - there are important things left to be done.

Since I was little, I imagined and theorized perfect societies; utopia seemed easy. But I asked - why was there still war: destroying lives, stunting progress, and promoting inequity? Why were there still corruption, gangs, and rapists? It seemed to me everywhere that, to many, what mattered was short-sighted - pleasure, money, power - but why? Are these what last?

What lasts is what we do to others and to the world. Societies will last. The world will last. We have a lifetime. When we fulfill ourselves in spite of others, we hurt the future and what matters. But it's not harder to fulfill others - it's simply a change in principle. When we realize that to help society - through progress, humanitarianism, and equity - is the most fulfilling matter of all, we might work for what lasts. That is true immortality, lasting when we're dust in the fields.