Prompt: 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.
I do not know if I am answering the question. Please look for anything bad with it. Any feedback will be accepted and appreciated.
This is rough draft I wrote just 15 min ago.
I was fourteen years old when I first read "The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha" by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. And I have changed drastically since then. I have always been an active learner in academics, arts, and cultures; I have learned in a daily basis about every subject, I have learned music to show my passions through it, and I have learned to read (in English and Spanish) archaic books because of my desire to learn about the past in order to know about the present.
After rereading "The Quixote" in English, I realize now, in my seventeenth year of life, that I am still a rookie in the game of knowledge, however, I know the basic principle of this game--there are no rules. I decide what and how I want to learn. And as I have come to learn more about Cervantes, his passions, his desires, and his thoughts, I realized that the power of language is one of these subjects I want to learn about, because I know that if masterly used, a powerful language might allow me to alter facts in one way or another in order to achieve my desired goals.
"Is Don Quixote crazy?" my brother asked me when reading Cervantes, a master of the Spanish language, lying on the brown carpet of my bedroom. I replied "Is he?" No answer. No rational individual is able to define insanity in a sentence or paragraph just as no one is able to be sure of being right or wrong about anything in this world. But we can define it, right?
Socrates' "Elenchus", used by Cervantes, explains that for any matter in this world there will be more than one opinion, comment, or critique. Thus, I read "The Quixote" for the first time and I found my desired discovery at that time. Liberty. I read "The Quixote" for the second time and still found my desired discovery, but at a new time. Love. How is this possible? Am I crazy to think that I can change so quickly and so differently? Yes. Maybe. No.
In this masterful piece of lecture, I aimed to fetch the possible reason to believe that this was the best book written in the Spanish language. Fortunately, I found it. It is...the fact that you have options, you decide what you want to believe. My mother told me once: "If you need to believe in something that is not your desire to believe, but others, you will never reach the sky." "What is that I believe in?" Myself.
I do not know if I am answering the question. Please look for anything bad with it. Any feedback will be accepted and appreciated.
This is rough draft I wrote just 15 min ago.
I was fourteen years old when I first read "The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha" by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. And I have changed drastically since then. I have always been an active learner in academics, arts, and cultures; I have learned in a daily basis about every subject, I have learned music to show my passions through it, and I have learned to read (in English and Spanish) archaic books because of my desire to learn about the past in order to know about the present.
After rereading "The Quixote" in English, I realize now, in my seventeenth year of life, that I am still a rookie in the game of knowledge, however, I know the basic principle of this game--there are no rules. I decide what and how I want to learn. And as I have come to learn more about Cervantes, his passions, his desires, and his thoughts, I realized that the power of language is one of these subjects I want to learn about, because I know that if masterly used, a powerful language might allow me to alter facts in one way or another in order to achieve my desired goals.
"Is Don Quixote crazy?" my brother asked me when reading Cervantes, a master of the Spanish language, lying on the brown carpet of my bedroom. I replied "Is he?" No answer. No rational individual is able to define insanity in a sentence or paragraph just as no one is able to be sure of being right or wrong about anything in this world. But we can define it, right?
Socrates' "Elenchus", used by Cervantes, explains that for any matter in this world there will be more than one opinion, comment, or critique. Thus, I read "The Quixote" for the first time and I found my desired discovery at that time. Liberty. I read "The Quixote" for the second time and still found my desired discovery, but at a new time. Love. How is this possible? Am I crazy to think that I can change so quickly and so differently? Yes. Maybe. No.
In this masterful piece of lecture, I aimed to fetch the possible reason to believe that this was the best book written in the Spanish language. Fortunately, I found it. It is...the fact that you have options, you decide what you want to believe. My mother told me once: "If you need to believe in something that is not your desire to believe, but others, you will never reach the sky." "What is that I believe in?" Myself.
