Hey everyone, this is my essay for one of Stanford's supplements. Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!
Stanford students are widely known to possess a sense of intellectual vitality. Tell us about an idea or an experience you have had that you find intellectually engaging.
The Half-Nelson produces the maximum torque when I position my body directly perpendicular to my opponent. The Russian Roll can flatten an opponent with minimal exertion courtesy of the law of conservation of momentum. While my body aches, my mind thrives during wrestling matches.
I've realized I take so much of the knowledge I learn for granted. Take my physics textbook - could everything contained within it be fundamentally flawed? It troubles me to see the incongruous relationship between quantum mechanics and general relativity, and I consider the unrivaled trust I place in my relationship with my learnings. What if all those laws, theorems, and principles that I greedily swallow are built upon a foundation of sand?
But a familiar, stale rubber scent greets me, and as I practice curiously named techniques, I discover an unwritten textbook chapter. I venture to wrestling practice with a weary body but an eager mind, for each wrestling match is an elegant experiment - an exercise in trust. Beneath the remote abstractions and rudimentary scenarios presented in the classroom, I meet physics in an intimate manner as body meets body in rude embrace. No doubt the concepts applicable to a wrestling match are trivially simple compared to the theoretical research surrounding the Large Hadron Collider. And of course to a cursory viewer, especially my parents, the scene of a wrestling match is less than pleasant. However, with each carefully calculated move, I test my relationship with my knowledge, and I couldn't be more satisfied.
Stanford students are widely known to possess a sense of intellectual vitality. Tell us about an idea or an experience you have had that you find intellectually engaging.
The Half-Nelson produces the maximum torque when I position my body directly perpendicular to my opponent. The Russian Roll can flatten an opponent with minimal exertion courtesy of the law of conservation of momentum. While my body aches, my mind thrives during wrestling matches.
I've realized I take so much of the knowledge I learn for granted. Take my physics textbook - could everything contained within it be fundamentally flawed? It troubles me to see the incongruous relationship between quantum mechanics and general relativity, and I consider the unrivaled trust I place in my relationship with my learnings. What if all those laws, theorems, and principles that I greedily swallow are built upon a foundation of sand?
But a familiar, stale rubber scent greets me, and as I practice curiously named techniques, I discover an unwritten textbook chapter. I venture to wrestling practice with a weary body but an eager mind, for each wrestling match is an elegant experiment - an exercise in trust. Beneath the remote abstractions and rudimentary scenarios presented in the classroom, I meet physics in an intimate manner as body meets body in rude embrace. No doubt the concepts applicable to a wrestling match are trivially simple compared to the theoretical research surrounding the Large Hadron Collider. And of course to a cursory viewer, especially my parents, the scene of a wrestling match is less than pleasant. However, with each carefully calculated move, I test my relationship with my knowledge, and I couldn't be more satisfied.
