I avoided the overdone mathematical approach to the prompt and gave it a twist of my own. I initially thought it'd be too obscene to write about (after all, the narrative takes place in the testicles... I KNOW, I KNOW, just keep reading), but I feel like UChicago's quirky and unconventional attitude would warrant something like this. Please tell me what you think.
I'm aware that the essay isn't really reflective of my ambitions, goals, or personality, but I feel like my Common App main essay in addition to my Why Chicago? essay already accomplishes that.
Please address any glaring grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, awkward wording, or anything you see fit! Thank you! :)
"Why?" he asked himself.
Y was retracing a path back to his dorm in the rain, umbrella poised and coffee in hand. Y had just finished a mandatory weight training class to strengthen his chromatids. Attending "St. Y's Chromosomal Academy," a prestigious all-Y boarding school situated in the city of Spermatocytopia, Y had been rigorously taught to search for X, in the name of his livelihood and the honor of his family. Portraits depicting the infamous symbol hugged the walls of the school corridors. Chants of "Pledge of Allegiance to X" served as the patriotic backdrop to each of his mornings. His schoolmates were bound to the same pursuit: "You must find X." Yet, he never really understood why, for no one cared to tell him what would actually ensue upon discovering X. Hidden treasure? Immortality? Love? The schoolmaster, his instructors, and his own spermatogonia mother had been unnervingly vague, urging that finding X will "bring good things." But what good things? He and his classmates had been indoctrinated with a singular, unyielding purpose and yet no one dared to leak the potent question of "Why?" The irony of attending an academy for the education of Ys and yet never being pressed to ask the question of "Why?", he bitterly thought. Y had been entrusted with a mission without being trusted with its purpose.
He trudged on anyway.
Y excelled in his studies, outperformed his classmates at Science Bowl, and outpaced all of his rivals on the track. He devoted his Saturdays to feeding the homeless at the soup kitchen in the poorer sector of Chromosome 21 territory. He tutored the younger Y chromosomes at St. Y's lower division on Twenty-Third Street. He continued to pour his energies into achieving more, winning more, and volunteering more. Despite all these activities, the resounding query of "Why?" continued to rattle in his nucleus, echoing louder as graduation inched closer. After so much time devoted to understanding the intricacies of X, its monopoly on which genes it controlled, its beautifully interwoven anatomy, its delicately intersecting structure, he still did not understand its purpose in his life. Y had more commitments and achievements under his belt but scraped no closer to answering that monosyllabic, lethally critical question.
"WHY AM I SEARCHING FOR X!" he outwardly pleaded.
As though in response to the gravity of the question, the ground beneath his feet shook. Suburban streets cracked in jagged lines and mounds of concrete dislodged from sidewalks, shooting into the air. Wind swirling around him, Y was lifted off his chromatids and emerged into a vortex that shrouded him in darkness. His whole being was being propelled through a series of winding tunnels and tubes, leaving him in a cloud of vertigo and nausea. This might be it, he thought. Y closed his eyes, bracing himself for the oblivion of death. At that very moment, when all he wished for was complete solitude in nothingness, an excuse to wallow in his failure, the all-too-familiar symbol -"X"- flashed in his nucleus, as though mocking his unfinished quest. Only appropriate, Y thought.
However, the symbol was far from his imagination. Upon landing in a dim, humid chamber, his eyes jolted open to reveal, just beyond the scope of his vision, the very symbol illuminated under his eyelids seconds ago during his death wish. Only, it wasn't a mere caricature on flimsy paper nor was it a lifeless textbook rendition depicting the dissection of its parts. It was truly X, in the flesh, too elegantly constructed for even the most skilled of artists to capture. In the process of shrugging off the shock of finally finding his life's purpose, Y realized he was in a sea of fellow Y chromosomes wriggling toward his life's mission, all eager to claim the X chromosome as theirs. Y would not allow this to happen. Beyond the familiar sense of entitlement from having worked so tirelessly at St. Y's, Y pulsed with a powerful, instinctive desire to lay stake in what he felt was so righteously his. With cheetah-like prowess, Y lunged forward and, with the help of chromatids strengthened by years of varsity track, soon outdistanced himself from the competition. Speed serving him well, he saw his Y comrades as a perpetual blur. Every now and then, one of his classmates would try to violently thwart him, threatening his earlier desire of death. No one could be trusted in this barbaric battle for X. Swiftly dodging these hurdles, he jetted onwards, to his centromere's singular and true desire: the X chromosome.
Arriving near his destination, Y was halted by another obstacle: a robust, viscous orb of protein that encased X. Y was not the first of his kind to reach X; many were already digging fiercely at the waxy barrier. Following suit, Y thrusted his sharp chromatids at the blockade with the might of a savage. Y was determined, held spellbound by the prospect of uncovering the mysteries behind X. After much frustration and fallen tears, Y wore down the barrier enough to hear X's rilling voice. This only further fueled his resolve and, with a final, forceful jab forward, Y broke the film. X lay before him, as radiant as ever.
"For you, I've devoted and risked my chromatids! What could possibly be so important in uncovering you?"
"The exquisite possibility of life," shrewdly replied X.
But before Y could begin to retort, all things faded to black and the orb in which they were encased began to duplicate.
***
The union of X and Y, nine months later, yielded a flawless baby boy. His first coherent utterance turned out to sound, almost unmistakably, like the inquiry of "Why?"
And so the question lives on.
I'm aware that the essay isn't really reflective of my ambitions, goals, or personality, but I feel like my Common App main essay in addition to my Why Chicago? essay already accomplishes that.
Please address any glaring grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, awkward wording, or anything you see fit! Thank you! :)
"Why?" he asked himself.
Y was retracing a path back to his dorm in the rain, umbrella poised and coffee in hand. Y had just finished a mandatory weight training class to strengthen his chromatids. Attending "St. Y's Chromosomal Academy," a prestigious all-Y boarding school situated in the city of Spermatocytopia, Y had been rigorously taught to search for X, in the name of his livelihood and the honor of his family. Portraits depicting the infamous symbol hugged the walls of the school corridors. Chants of "Pledge of Allegiance to X" served as the patriotic backdrop to each of his mornings. His schoolmates were bound to the same pursuit: "You must find X." Yet, he never really understood why, for no one cared to tell him what would actually ensue upon discovering X. Hidden treasure? Immortality? Love? The schoolmaster, his instructors, and his own spermatogonia mother had been unnervingly vague, urging that finding X will "bring good things." But what good things? He and his classmates had been indoctrinated with a singular, unyielding purpose and yet no one dared to leak the potent question of "Why?" The irony of attending an academy for the education of Ys and yet never being pressed to ask the question of "Why?", he bitterly thought. Y had been entrusted with a mission without being trusted with its purpose.
He trudged on anyway.
Y excelled in his studies, outperformed his classmates at Science Bowl, and outpaced all of his rivals on the track. He devoted his Saturdays to feeding the homeless at the soup kitchen in the poorer sector of Chromosome 21 territory. He tutored the younger Y chromosomes at St. Y's lower division on Twenty-Third Street. He continued to pour his energies into achieving more, winning more, and volunteering more. Despite all these activities, the resounding query of "Why?" continued to rattle in his nucleus, echoing louder as graduation inched closer. After so much time devoted to understanding the intricacies of X, its monopoly on which genes it controlled, its beautifully interwoven anatomy, its delicately intersecting structure, he still did not understand its purpose in his life. Y had more commitments and achievements under his belt but scraped no closer to answering that monosyllabic, lethally critical question.
"WHY AM I SEARCHING FOR X!" he outwardly pleaded.
As though in response to the gravity of the question, the ground beneath his feet shook. Suburban streets cracked in jagged lines and mounds of concrete dislodged from sidewalks, shooting into the air. Wind swirling around him, Y was lifted off his chromatids and emerged into a vortex that shrouded him in darkness. His whole being was being propelled through a series of winding tunnels and tubes, leaving him in a cloud of vertigo and nausea. This might be it, he thought. Y closed his eyes, bracing himself for the oblivion of death. At that very moment, when all he wished for was complete solitude in nothingness, an excuse to wallow in his failure, the all-too-familiar symbol -"X"- flashed in his nucleus, as though mocking his unfinished quest. Only appropriate, Y thought.
However, the symbol was far from his imagination. Upon landing in a dim, humid chamber, his eyes jolted open to reveal, just beyond the scope of his vision, the very symbol illuminated under his eyelids seconds ago during his death wish. Only, it wasn't a mere caricature on flimsy paper nor was it a lifeless textbook rendition depicting the dissection of its parts. It was truly X, in the flesh, too elegantly constructed for even the most skilled of artists to capture. In the process of shrugging off the shock of finally finding his life's purpose, Y realized he was in a sea of fellow Y chromosomes wriggling toward his life's mission, all eager to claim the X chromosome as theirs. Y would not allow this to happen. Beyond the familiar sense of entitlement from having worked so tirelessly at St. Y's, Y pulsed with a powerful, instinctive desire to lay stake in what he felt was so righteously his. With cheetah-like prowess, Y lunged forward and, with the help of chromatids strengthened by years of varsity track, soon outdistanced himself from the competition. Speed serving him well, he saw his Y comrades as a perpetual blur. Every now and then, one of his classmates would try to violently thwart him, threatening his earlier desire of death. No one could be trusted in this barbaric battle for X. Swiftly dodging these hurdles, he jetted onwards, to his centromere's singular and true desire: the X chromosome.
Arriving near his destination, Y was halted by another obstacle: a robust, viscous orb of protein that encased X. Y was not the first of his kind to reach X; many were already digging fiercely at the waxy barrier. Following suit, Y thrusted his sharp chromatids at the blockade with the might of a savage. Y was determined, held spellbound by the prospect of uncovering the mysteries behind X. After much frustration and fallen tears, Y wore down the barrier enough to hear X's rilling voice. This only further fueled his resolve and, with a final, forceful jab forward, Y broke the film. X lay before him, as radiant as ever.
"For you, I've devoted and risked my chromatids! What could possibly be so important in uncovering you?"
"The exquisite possibility of life," shrewdly replied X.
But before Y could begin to retort, all things faded to black and the orb in which they were encased began to duplicate.
***
The union of X and Y, nine months later, yielded a flawless baby boy. His first coherent utterance turned out to sound, almost unmistakably, like the inquiry of "Why?"
And so the question lives on.
Do You Need