Any criticism is appreciated. If it isn't coherently written or if the whole flow of the essay doesn't even work, you can tell me. Thank you!
There is a net around us. A web spun of equations, computations. The human interpretation of reality. Our attempt to manifest a completed puzzle. I've been devouring the combined works of our predecessors, Einstein, Newton, Heisenberg, Tesla, trying to piece together a perspective on things. Constantly scratching deeper and sweeping further out, searching eternally for understanding is human nature. This was how I began to feel I could glimpse a vision of the universe, find faith in the dissection of something beautiful, life. My first love was physics, at a young age.
Then the spiraling uncertainty and self-doubt every scientist experiences hit me. Should we really squander our ephemeral time searching for answers about where we came from, why we're here? Was this given to us to be questioned, or appreciated? What avenue do I take? Should I just spend my time on earth enjoying carnal pleasures? In the past year my search for a meaningful path turned into a starved, distorted carpe diem. Seize the day, we could die at any moment; the number one priority should be happiness. It was empty gratification at its best: justified.
Rewind back to the time between my youthful ambition and my hedonistic folly. My first infatuation was physics, but soon many others followed. A chameleon by nature, I became passionate about many subjects. I consumed books, taught myself how to play piano, started painting, writing poetry. Science and math had always come naturally to me, so the challenge was in the arts, and anything that was challenging I had to learn. I just had to keep absorbing. With the world at our fingertips, Google search for fingertips 15,400,000 results in 0.13 seconds, I became an expert dabbler. I began to delve into various studies.
Of course none of this helped me in my whole self-realization kick. It only made the path darker. So then I started to dabble with different walks of life. Meeting people, for good or bad, and trying new things. I felt free; I was exploring. Taste testing the sea of raw possibilities. My original love for scientific study had influenced me to search for meaning. But so young and ignorant and independent (hard-working father, mother with medical disability), I soon went astray. First trying to validate my empty existence with hedonistic principles, I went from exploring to floating, lost at sea. I wasn't like my associations, they didn't understand my need for more. Continuing this path was simply sticking myself in a lifestyle I didn't wish to pursue. The sense of certainty and ambition I had that came with purpose had departed, and that is the most excruciating void to feel.
I need purpose; I need goals. This is the way I function. Never have I been so unhappy than when I wasn't killing myself, sleeping four hours a night, working full-time and terrorizing my mind with theories and formulas. If I'm not constantly challenging myself, I can't feel alive. It's the masochist within me, a prerequisite to any science/engineering major. Now that I have found myself again I realize this.
So this is my tumultuous chronology, The Trials and Tribulations of a Questioning Youth. Me trying to assess myself as a worthy, resolved applicant. Trying to enumerate the only thing I think may set me apart, a rebirth of aspiration. Genuinely, this course has taught me what I need and want, and how I'm going to hunt my future. And its right where it always was with science, the skeptic's religion, I just had to find my faith again. Sometimes you need to be shaken loose of all your preconceptions, beat free of what you know, to synthesize who you are. You have to get lost to be found.
There is a net around us. A web spun of equations, computations. The human interpretation of reality. Our attempt to manifest a completed puzzle. I've been devouring the combined works of our predecessors, Einstein, Newton, Heisenberg, Tesla, trying to piece together a perspective on things. Constantly scratching deeper and sweeping further out, searching eternally for understanding is human nature. This was how I began to feel I could glimpse a vision of the universe, find faith in the dissection of something beautiful, life. My first love was physics, at a young age.
Then the spiraling uncertainty and self-doubt every scientist experiences hit me. Should we really squander our ephemeral time searching for answers about where we came from, why we're here? Was this given to us to be questioned, or appreciated? What avenue do I take? Should I just spend my time on earth enjoying carnal pleasures? In the past year my search for a meaningful path turned into a starved, distorted carpe diem. Seize the day, we could die at any moment; the number one priority should be happiness. It was empty gratification at its best: justified.
Rewind back to the time between my youthful ambition and my hedonistic folly. My first infatuation was physics, but soon many others followed. A chameleon by nature, I became passionate about many subjects. I consumed books, taught myself how to play piano, started painting, writing poetry. Science and math had always come naturally to me, so the challenge was in the arts, and anything that was challenging I had to learn. I just had to keep absorbing. With the world at our fingertips, Google search for fingertips 15,400,000 results in 0.13 seconds, I became an expert dabbler. I began to delve into various studies.
Of course none of this helped me in my whole self-realization kick. It only made the path darker. So then I started to dabble with different walks of life. Meeting people, for good or bad, and trying new things. I felt free; I was exploring. Taste testing the sea of raw possibilities. My original love for scientific study had influenced me to search for meaning. But so young and ignorant and independent (hard-working father, mother with medical disability), I soon went astray. First trying to validate my empty existence with hedonistic principles, I went from exploring to floating, lost at sea. I wasn't like my associations, they didn't understand my need for more. Continuing this path was simply sticking myself in a lifestyle I didn't wish to pursue. The sense of certainty and ambition I had that came with purpose had departed, and that is the most excruciating void to feel.
I need purpose; I need goals. This is the way I function. Never have I been so unhappy than when I wasn't killing myself, sleeping four hours a night, working full-time and terrorizing my mind with theories and formulas. If I'm not constantly challenging myself, I can't feel alive. It's the masochist within me, a prerequisite to any science/engineering major. Now that I have found myself again I realize this.
So this is my tumultuous chronology, The Trials and Tribulations of a Questioning Youth. Me trying to assess myself as a worthy, resolved applicant. Trying to enumerate the only thing I think may set me apart, a rebirth of aspiration. Genuinely, this course has taught me what I need and want, and how I'm going to hunt my future. And its right where it always was with science, the skeptic's religion, I just had to find my faith again. Sometimes you need to be shaken loose of all your preconceptions, beat free of what you know, to synthesize who you are. You have to get lost to be found.