Unanswered [1] | Urgent [0]
  

Home / Undergraduate   % width   Posts: 3


Person Who Influenced (Princeton): My Father and the Butterfly



yosh503037 12 / 22  
Sep 13, 2013   #1
Please give any feedback you may have, negative or positive, about the essay! If you want for me to read over your essays, please, just let me know, and I will be on it. Thanks!

Tell us about a person who has influenced you in a significant way.

A butterfly floated above our heads. Pointing, my cousin asked, with an all-too-excited voice, "Do you know what that is?" I paused for a moment to think. "Well...Do you?" he pestered.

"I haven't the slightest idea what it is," I said in return.

"It's a monarch butterfly!" he bursted, responding to the very question he had asked just about twelve seconds ago. I quickly noted that in my mental journal and took its picture as he remarked, "Don't you learn anything in school?"

That night, I asked my father "Dad, do you know what this is?" holding out the picture from that morning.

"Why, isn't that a monarch butterfly?" Me nodding as he replied, he wondered aloud, "Why so curious all of a sudden?" I explained that morning's events and he chuckled. "Let's think about this more. This butterfly you have here," he said, tapping at the picture, "is a monarch butterfly to us. But in China, it's a diwang dieh, in India a raja bataraphlaya, in Italy a farfalla monarca, and so on. And in learning all of that, you have still will not have learned anything about the butterfly. You will just have learned about humans and what they call the butterfly. Now, let's actually look at the animal." That day, I learned how butterflies fly and why they have the colors they do. Yet, I learned something more than about butterflies that day: that people should explore what's behind a name, rather than just the name itself. From here, a passion was ignited to explore nature and all that modern society has created. Both "worlds" are complex systems, which I believe contain a symmetry and beauty best described, simplified, and understood through the lenses of physics and applied maths.

Here we are, years later, and that fire of discovery continues to rage on, one that neither I nor my father have been able to quell. Last summer, I began conducting research on fusion, for I I care about energy and believed fusion offered the most complete, single worldwide energy solution. When I met with my PPPL Research Professor to discuss the work we were planning to do, we spent countless hours discussing the intricacies of tokamaks and lasers, my father closely trailing behind, listening to the discussion. After following the professor and myself around for hours, my father finally sat back into the car, followed shortly by me...And my father wondered, "So, what exactly was going on back there?"

I was at a loss for words: after 11 years, the roles had flipped. It had never occurred to me that all of us are only capable of learning so much: my father, in my naïve years, was akin to a walking, definitely interesting, encyclopedia of knowledge just waiting to be explored. But, it turned out that there were some entries missing in this encyclopedia that I could now fill myself. Yet, here I was, now able to fill those very pages, which imbued in me something more: exploring the world is a grand task...one that we cannot do alone.

dmmartinez1492 3 / 7  
Sep 15, 2013   #2
I honestly loved your essay! It's short, sweet and concise. I like how you used the butterfly analogy to explain you're interest in exploring the world.

I think is well written, the only thing I would consider is to maybe somehow directly state how you're father was a direct influence for you to explore you're

social surroundings. I know you use you're father throughout stating how he triggered you're curiosity, but instead of letting the audience try and anticipate it (although you made it pretty clear) try to state it directly.

Overall it's well - written.

- Ps. Could you read my essay for Grad school? it's very direct because its only supposed to be one page, and feel free to let me know if there is something I should change.
Th25cc 2 / 90  
Sep 15, 2013   #3
I like your story but one thing you could do would be to include a topic sentence/paragraph and concluding sentence that directly state/summarize how your father has influenced you. The person you're discussing isn't evident to the very end.

Keep the story. Just be a bit more direct.


Home / Undergraduate / Person Who Influenced (Princeton): My Father and the Butterfly
Do You Need
Academic Writing
or Editing Help?
Fill out one of these forms:

Graduate Writing / Editing:
GraduateWriter form ◳

Best Essay Service:
CustomPapers form ◳

Excellence in Editing:
Rose Editing ◳

AI-Paper Rewriting:
Robot Rewrite ◳

Academic AI Writer:
Custom AI Writer ◳