uchicago "Between living and dreaming there is a third thing. Guess it."

the prompt:
Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote, "Between living and dreaming there is a third thing. Guess it." Give us your guess.

my essay (be brutal!):
There is no better feeling than crawling into a warm, soft bed at the end of a long day. I curl up under soft, satiny sheets and rest my sleepy head on a plush down pillow. I take a deep, cleansing breath in, and as I exhale all tension disappears from my muscles, and the worries and stresses of the day rise like mist from my body and float away. The logical, black and white, zero and one, yes and no part of my brain that works all day analyzing situations and making decisions powers down. My operating system has shut down for the night, and I am charging my batteries for tomorrow. The technicolor landscape of my dreams lies just ahead. At peace, I drift along without a care in that wonderful void between consciousness and unconsciousness.

Magical things happen when I am in this state, when I am no longer completely awake but not quite in dreamland. As relaxed as I am, this is the time when I do my best thinking, and come up with those so-crazy-it-just-might-work ideas. Why? The vivid colors and mad ideas that will shortly become my dreams bounce around in my head, unchecked by the practical part of my brain. They cross paths with my exiting thoughts, practical thoughts about the day I have just completed, and an explosion occurs! It is as if matter and antimatter have collided in my head. But the aftermath isn't a gigantic mushroom cloud spewing gamma rays. It's an ingenious new idea, offspring of my logical, practical thoughts and aimless ramblings of my subconscious that I spend the day suppressing. The idea could be anything: an inventive topic for an English paper, a hunch about what happened to the important piece of paper I spent all day searching for, or a creative gift idea for my mom's birthday. It could even be (and has been!) something as crazy as a theory about the existence of the tenth dimension.

I believe that the semiconscious state in which such an ingenious idea is created is the third thing: the thing between wakefulness and sleep, living and dreaming. My cesspool of a semiconscious brain is the environment in which an emulsion can be made of two normally immiscible types of thoughts: the conscious and the unconscious. The thoughts fuse into one single thing: a novel idea, a creative solution to a practical problem.

In living I deal with the practical problems of life, and in dreaming I experience ideal but unrealistic solutions to the problems. Semi consciousness is the place in between: where thoughts from both my living and dreaming states combine to form an idea about how to make those ideal dream solutions part of my life.

Hi,

for what I've read in other essays, your statement of purpose speaks about yourself and your skills and then why you want to join certain program and why you're an ideal candidate. I hope that helps.

Greetings.

Great sentence! It has a comfortable feeling, and it is great for setting up the feeling that you are talking about...

Oh, a meditation practitioner...


At the end of the first paragraph I would like to see something more poignant, more specific and indicative of the theme of the essay. Right now all it is is some good writing about an experience... very good writing, but get to the point a little at the end of that paragraph.


Well, on second thought, I take that back, because you just got very specific here...

It will be great if you can connect this to your chosen field of study... psychology? That would be cool... neuroscience? Connect this to the mission you are on...

:-)

Hey, thanks for the response!

I'm thinking of a math major...so maybe instead of "an inventive topic for an English paper" I could do something about coming up with an idea for how to solve a math problem??? Or would I have to go all-out and write another paragraph about how the whole thing helps me with math problems in general...or i suppose I could do both, but I don't want to make it too long!

Another thought: I could focus the whole essay on the mathematical ideas that I develop...?

Wow, really great essay! You managed to choose a slightly cliche idea and make it very original--a tough thing to do. Great job! Also, about the math idea, I would say all you really need to do is add a few things about math here and there in, say, the third or fourth paragraph. Maybe talk about a creative side of math or something. Bridge the logic and calculations of math with with your creative approach or talk about some similar experience. This is truly a very well written essay. I am also working on the Uchicago prompts, and I really liked this one as well.

Anyway, love the essay and I wish you the best of luck!