Undergraduate / U Chicago Supplement - I have a mind that does not stick - the importance of 'useless' trivia [5]

Hey everyone! This is my U Chicago supplement essay. The prompt is:

"Mind that does not stick."
-Zen Master Shoitsu (1202-80) | (2005-2006)

I really need some constructive criticism on it... I really want to show what kind of person I am (huge book nerd, you'll see...). I heard U Chicago encourages students to geek out, but I want to make sure it's not too much. If that make sense. I'm EAing, so this essay is super important to me. Anything will be helpful!!

Be harsh! I can take it (hopefully).

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My mind does not stick. Just a few days ago, I was at school, trying to write my English assignment on Hamlet. I had no idea what to write, so I decided researching would be a good idea. I went to library to look for some secondary materials, and the next thing I knew, I was reading Bertolt Brecht'sMother Courage and Her Children. Confused, I looked around, trying to piece together how I went from Shakespearean tragedy to postmodern theatre. Scattered around me were Aristotle's Poetics, T. S. Eliot's essays, and my own copy of Hamlet. There was only one explanation - I got sidetracked again. My mind does not stick - once given the opportunity, it wants to read everything.

In reading, I go through 'phases.' I tend to spend a period of time reading only the works of one particular author, a specific genre, or a literary movement. Then, after few weeks of obsession, I move on. The passion dissipates, like tears in rain. My mind is restless, always demanding more; being swamped in one spot is unbearable. It wants to be on the road: racing, chasing after new information, chasing for more. Perhaps this is why I spend so much time on Wikipedia. The actual Wikipedia page does not eat away much time, but the 'further reading' section is completely a different story. There is always more to read.

My mind does not stick. Some may argue it is a good thing - I have endless intellectual curiosity to read and absorb more. However, just like my mind refuses to be stuck in one paradigm, useful information never sticks in my mind. I take pride in my love of reading. I am never ashamed to admit that I am the sort of person who reads the back of the cereal box during breakfast, but I always found it slightly ironic that it is always the most useless trivia that I remember. If you asked me about Marcel Duchamp, the first thing that came to my mind would not the upside down toilet that he claimed to be a fountain. It would be the fact that he left his sister's algebra textbook out in the sun, until the words faded away, as a birthday gift to her, who loathed mathematics. If Foucault came up in a conversation, it would take several moments for me to recall that he was the genius who wrote Madness and Civilization, but I would definitely know that when Edmund White asked him why he was so intelligent, Foucault said it was because, in order to impress a boy he liked in middle school, he wrote all of the boy's homework, from Medieval history to algebra. Once, my friend asked me if I knew the band Steely Dan. I did not know how to answer. I have never heard its music - in fact, I did not even know the genre of its music - but for some reason, I knew that the band name came from William Burroughs' Naked Lunch. While we are on the topic, did you know that Burroughs had a pet cobra, which he fed - much to the vet's horror - by hand?

Having a mind that does not stick does get problematic at times. There are countless times in my life when somebody asks me incredulously, 'How do you even know that?' No matter how often I get asked the same question, I always feel awkward under their confused and scrutinizing gaze, but my answer remains the same - 'I read it somewhere.' My mind is always sprinting in several different directions at once, demanding more, picking up tidbits of information here and there, but, somehow, these tidbits became the foundation of my empirical knowledge. Duchamp's atypical yet heartfelt present is harmonious with his belief that anything could become art, even 'readymades.' Foucault's erudite way of wooing probably laid the foundation for the vast amount of knowledge evident in his later essays. Burroughs' perturbing choice of a pet and his nonchalance towards its lethality echoes with his style of writing - strangely elegant, most definitely unhinged, balancing right on the verge between adventure and a death wish.

Indeed, I have a mind that wanders, a mind that only picks up the most off-the-beaten-track trivia; but this trivia, seemingly inconsequential, gathered up and sculpted my understanding of the arts to an impossible height. Yes, I have a mind that does not stick - I would not have it any other way.

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Thank you SO MUCH! ><

Undergraduate / Why U Chicago - polymath education for an aspiring critic [6]

HELP PLEASE! Please be harsh. I am EAing so I really need a strong, coherent essay.
On commonapp it doesn't really give a word count for this essay. Mine is less than a page long (Times new roman, 12pt).

How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to UChicago.

I remember the first time I read Against Interpretation. It was 2 o'clock in the morning. I was sitting in my bed, and as I reached the finishing lines of the magnificently written polemic, I jumped out of bed and punched in the air out of sheer delight and excitement. I realized at that moment what I wanted to do with my life - I wanted to become a critic.

What I soon realized was that to become a critic, I needed to know about everything. A critic is someone who sees things on the whole continuum, who sees the bigger picture. When other people dismissed B films as cheap exploitation, Sontag saw them as a metaphor for the decline and ambiguity in artistic morality. In order to sculpt myself into the critic I know I have the potential to become, what I need, above all, is a UChicago education. An education that lets 'knowledge grow from more to more'. At UChicago, I will be able to explore my areas of interest in greater depth, but more importantly, I have boundless intellectual freedom to explore things I knew little, or never even heard, about. With a general education that branches out into six different areas of knowledge, UChicago ensures that my mind will be stretched to its widest possible dimensions, which is the fundamental foundation to becoming a critic.

More importantly, UChicago is somewhere I belong. I have always been an oddball, someone who does not really fit in traditional molds. As a third culture kid, I have never been 'nice' enough to be Canadian, but not reserved enough to be traditionally Chinese either. People often see me as a bookworm, and rightly so, but my inability to talk without pop culture references also confuse them - 'if you watch so many movies, how do you have time to read?' Perhaps this was the reason that I decided to write my Extended Essay for the International Baccalaureate on how Thomas Pynchon subverts expectations in The Crying of Lot 49. I only believe in expectations to the extent that they should be destroyed, something that echoes with UChicago's own ethos to 'challenge accepted ideas.' Yes, I have always been eccentric, which is the reason that I know for sure that I will take to UChicago like fish to water. At UChicago, there is no 'correct' way to do something, only endless ideas on how something could be done. With its strong emphasis on Socratic method and 'disdain for dogma and conventionality', UChicago is the only place I can imagine myself studying at. Only at UChicago, will my critical thinking skills be sharpened to their finest.

It is always hard to describe the best minds of their generations. When people speak of Da Vinci, the list goes on: painter, architect, historian, botanist... Years later, when people speak of Cecily Chen, I wish for myself the same: critic, postmodernist, philosopher, writer, UChicago graduate.

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THANK YOU SO MUCH