"Describe an intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper or research topic) that has meant the most to you."
I do not believe I can be understood completely as person, much less a scholar, without shedding some light upon the literary idea that has affected my academic self most profoundly. It resounds as clearly as ever to me today, as I consider the meaning of an undergraduate education as it relates to my ongoing search for a particular field of extended study.
The idea took shape over a century and a half ago, in Concord Massachusetts. Henry David Thoreau, in the conclusion of his celebrated philosophical work Walden, elaborates upon the inherent motive behind his foray into the wilderness that resulted in a year-long stay in a primitive cabin on Walden Pond: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Ever since I first read excerpts of Walden roughly a year ago and exposed myself to the reflections of Thoreau, I've recognized that a fundamental program for living exists in the sentence above, a program beautifully applicable to my own life and especially the method in which I approach the academic world I exist in.
The crux of Thoreau's argument insists on self-reliance, an isolation which he achieved by venturing away from civilization and making his home amongst the wildlife in "the woods" surrounding Walden Pond. Through solitude and introspection he achieves a sense of "deliberateness", a continuous confrontation of basic human notions like greed, hunger and mortality. To Thoreau, this contemplation culminates in revelation; through a deliberate existence any man can discover himself, his purpose in life, and several innate truths which ought to govern the manner in which he pursues his vocation.
I've come to realize, as I conclude my time at ----, that I've found my "woods." However, unlike Thoreau's, my woods is not populated by the squirrels and pines and minnows of a New England forest ecosystem. Instead, books, essays, problems, and articles inhabit it and give it life and inherent significance. In my woods, one which is littered with the diversity of academia, I can confront the same "essential facts of life" that Thoreau does. I can observe the natural world exquisitely modeled in figures as I work through a Calculus exercise, just as I can come face to face with my own mortality through examining the dying struggle of a fictional protagonist in Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych. I find that I'm forced to acknowledge the dichotomic tension that exists within myself between realism and idealism as I follow Don Quijote and Sancho Panza on their ridiculous adventures through 17th-century Spain. Even in Economics, a field which I at one time anticipated to be the most superficial, I've scrutinized the nature of greed and its devastating human consequences. My "woods," simply put, is schoolwork; in my own analysis and investigation, I find the same solitude, the same introspection, and the same self-discovery that Thoreau does as he observes the reflecting surface of the water of Walden Pond.
What will be my ultimate purpose in life? This final piece to my Thoreauvian puzzle, vocation, remains tantalizingly unclear to me as I progress deeper and deeper into the "woods" of a more deliberate academic lifestyle. However, I have faith that as I keep grappling with the complexity of the world around me through my studies in novels and textbooks alike, my vocation, my innate calling, will become clear and attainable. Until then, I see my undergraduate education as my expedition into the most diverse and abundant "woods" a scholar could imagine.
--Feel free to tear into it. Thanks!
I do not believe I can be understood completely as person, much less a scholar, without shedding some light upon the literary idea that has affected my academic self most profoundly. It resounds as clearly as ever to me today, as I consider the meaning of an undergraduate education as it relates to my ongoing search for a particular field of extended study.
The idea took shape over a century and a half ago, in Concord Massachusetts. Henry David Thoreau, in the conclusion of his celebrated philosophical work Walden, elaborates upon the inherent motive behind his foray into the wilderness that resulted in a year-long stay in a primitive cabin on Walden Pond: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Ever since I first read excerpts of Walden roughly a year ago and exposed myself to the reflections of Thoreau, I've recognized that a fundamental program for living exists in the sentence above, a program beautifully applicable to my own life and especially the method in which I approach the academic world I exist in.
The crux of Thoreau's argument insists on self-reliance, an isolation which he achieved by venturing away from civilization and making his home amongst the wildlife in "the woods" surrounding Walden Pond. Through solitude and introspection he achieves a sense of "deliberateness", a continuous confrontation of basic human notions like greed, hunger and mortality. To Thoreau, this contemplation culminates in revelation; through a deliberate existence any man can discover himself, his purpose in life, and several innate truths which ought to govern the manner in which he pursues his vocation.
I've come to realize, as I conclude my time at ----, that I've found my "woods." However, unlike Thoreau's, my woods is not populated by the squirrels and pines and minnows of a New England forest ecosystem. Instead, books, essays, problems, and articles inhabit it and give it life and inherent significance. In my woods, one which is littered with the diversity of academia, I can confront the same "essential facts of life" that Thoreau does. I can observe the natural world exquisitely modeled in figures as I work through a Calculus exercise, just as I can come face to face with my own mortality through examining the dying struggle of a fictional protagonist in Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych. I find that I'm forced to acknowledge the dichotomic tension that exists within myself between realism and idealism as I follow Don Quijote and Sancho Panza on their ridiculous adventures through 17th-century Spain. Even in Economics, a field which I at one time anticipated to be the most superficial, I've scrutinized the nature of greed and its devastating human consequences. My "woods," simply put, is schoolwork; in my own analysis and investigation, I find the same solitude, the same introspection, and the same self-discovery that Thoreau does as he observes the reflecting surface of the water of Walden Pond.
What will be my ultimate purpose in life? This final piece to my Thoreauvian puzzle, vocation, remains tantalizingly unclear to me as I progress deeper and deeper into the "woods" of a more deliberate academic lifestyle. However, I have faith that as I keep grappling with the complexity of the world around me through my studies in novels and textbooks alike, my vocation, my innate calling, will become clear and attainable. Until then, I see my undergraduate education as my expedition into the most diverse and abundant "woods" a scholar could imagine.
--Feel free to tear into it. Thanks!
