Describe your intellectual interests, their evolution, and what makes them exciting to you. Tell us how you will utilize the academic programs in the College of Arts and Sciences to further explore your interests, intended major, or field of study.
(This essay is incomplete, and i'm having some serious issues with the second half of the prompt. How am i to answer "How" i will use the academic programs". I'm almost out of words so please suggest where to trim.
I've never had an affinity for numbers; digits, decimals and fractions have always appeared cold, drone like, carrying a fatal finite connotation. Though more than capable of performing simple addition and subtraction and filling in my times-tables, the idea that the world around us can be confined, dictated in terms of limits, formulas, and coordinate planes repels me; I'd rather think the universe limitless. Fearing constraint, a far off, but inevitable terminus of understanding, I instead turned my intellectual interests towards more human-centered subjects; throwing myself fully into the endless ocean of experience that mankind has created over its brief 50,000 year existence.
As a young boy, I found myself drawn to the allure of history early and often, immersing myself in the subject's rudiments. A large cyan poster, laminated and framed, housing the stoic visages of our first forty-two Presidents, served as the basis for this interest. Constantly reading, rehearsing and memorizing the names, dates of service, and faces of these men, I soon learned to mechanically recite the order in which they served, making me a minor attraction at family events. Upon starting school, and receiving a formal introduction to history's ebb and flow, I went fact crazy, reading up on all I could on not just our 42 heads of state but on their accomplishments, policies, successes and failures. Now, having taken courses in economics, rhetoric, global politics, the history of our nation, and having flooded my head with all sorts of historical media, I find excitement and wonder in the explosive dynamic of mankind's saga. I sit in awe of how one man's deranged ambition can drive the world into an apocalyptic war; how a single written text or well orated speech can unite an entire people, or destroy an entire empire. I remain fascinated with the constant evolution and amplification of warfare, and the precarious fragility of peace. I still burn with curiosity as to how a single, idealistic political experiment, born of anger over taxation, could uproot centuries of monarchial rule and throw an entire continent into a tumultuous era of change. Yet, perhaps most importantly, I yearn to decipher the unseen pattern that guides man through the years, the same subconscious language of the tongue and body harnessed by Churchill, Lombardi, Collins and King, the same intangible qualities of character that made such appalling figures as Hitler and Stalin, radicals like Lenin and Robespierre able to captivate the masses.
At Cornell University's College Of Arts and Sciences, I hope to further these interests, and solve these mysteries in the context of a Liberal Arts College. With the departments of government, history, and philosophy all contained within the college it would be more than feasible to take in a course-load featuring all three subjects. While government, would my primary focus,
How am i to answer "How" i will use the academic programs".
Well, mabe you are overcomplicating it in your mind. HOW will I use the class I am taking next week? It is a class about Adobe Photoshop. I'll use it to create greeting cards and get rich with my clever greeting card ideas.
How would I use a college education like this one at Cornell if I was interested in government? Do you mean you are interested in politics? If so, your career is all about wisdom. People want to elect government officials who have wisdom, and wisdom comes from insight learned at the college of arts and sciences. You need to discuss your specific goals for the future... what you would like to accomplish.. and if you do that, it will be easy to describe how the courses (and name some specific professors!) will help prepare you.
If you name 3 professional goals that are as unique as you are, it will be easy to discuss how the program will be useful to you.
I have no criticism of your writing as I see it here! It is a great draft, ready to be revised to focus on your PLAN for how to use the education.
:-)
