The faculty of thinking and acquiring knowledge; Stanford/ Intellectual Vitality

So here's my answer to prompt #1, tear it apart please!

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.

"Why?" was the usual response I expected from my parents when I asked if I could build a trebuchet. The answer was provided when they saw three teenage boys victoriously launching oranges halfway down the street. After much rebuilding and reworking we had a five-foot wooden structure that flung oranges over our neighbor's fence half the time and propelled juice grenades into my kitchen window the other half. The trebuchet was a pile of rotting wood and rusty nails jutting out at all angles, but somehow arranged in a way that the movement of the counter-weight provided enough momentum to slingshot those juicy projectiles higher than the tallest telephone poles in our neighborhood.

However, I realized that the only reason my trebuchet worked was because of trial and error. The sling tore within the first two launches, but the new and improved sling, utilizing the unparalleled strength of marine rope, was installed before the sun set. The structure wasn't sturdy enough, but two crossbeams fixed the problem. Some might call these failures or mistakes; I call this learning. Intellect is defined as "the faculty of thinking and acquiring knowledge", and learning from mistakes is one of the best ways to acquire knowledge. Leonardo Da Vinci's first trebuchet design fell short of his expectations but he didn't give up and improved each design.

All the years of building Lego towers that fell down, producing lop-sided Erector contraptions and launching misguided orange projectiles has led me to my love of engineering and physics. I'm always ready to learn from my experiences whether they end up successes or failures. Who knows? Maybe one day instead of launching oranges into my neighbor's yards I could be launching oranges to Mars.

Thanks! - John

Who by?

Those are just wording suggestions, but overall amazing writing! Your passion for trial and error, and launching oranges is truly shown.

Stanford would be lucky to have you.

Check out my essays if you get a chance please : )

just sounds wrong. what are you trying to say? i can kind of get a feel for it as a read further, but it's a really poor opening. awkward and confusing. how about just "my parents asked"? they get that you do this sort of thing a lot in the last paragraph.


passive. "the answer came in the sight of"? "they got their answer from the sight of"?


"victoriously" sounds off in this context.


where's the flow? i understand that you get to the oranges later, but the wording is so abrupt that it sounds like you're starting a new topic entirely.


"but it was"

- - you use "juicy" twice and too close together.


you can get rid of this altogether

- - in general, paragraph two is very stilted. flow flow flow.


isn't it the other way around? how about "I discovered my love...throughout all..."?


"from both the successes and failures I experience"?

in general, it's a really good topic. says a lot about who you are, and it provides vivid mental images. it's entertaining, yet it still manages to promote your strong points. i LOVE your last line. all you need to work on is language, because right now it's sounding very disjointed.

read mine mebbe?? ;D

Thanks guys, and yeah, as you can probably tell, I'm a math student not an english student!

- John