Using a favorite quotation from an essay or book you have read in the last three years as a starting point, tell us about an event or experience that helped you define one of your values or changed how you approach the world. Please write the quotation, title, and author at the beginning of your essay:
H.G. Wells, in The Time Machine, writes that "nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change." Perhaps that is why our world is overflowing with intelligent, bright, creative individuals today. We are so in need of change if we are to avoid a future like that in H.G. Well's novel. I realized this truth for myself during my freshman year when I visited a women and children's homeless shelter.
The children were extremely excited to see us. My service group was handing out gifts, but I was drawn to one child with wide, doe-like eyes. Her reaction to the orange I held out as a greeting was strange. She gingerly picked up the orange from my hand, carefully inspected it, and then suddenly sank her teeth right in. Taken aback, I gently taught the child how to peel the orange. In the present, I think back to this incident and wonder that society has come to the point where a child cannot even experience the simple joys of an orange. That day I had personally witnessed the very signs of class disparity that H.G. Wells critiques in The Time Machine.
Though it may seem unlikely for the world to develop one rich, comfortable class that makes the lower working class serve its every need, there are precursors today that should be taken as warning. Just as the Morlocks are nearly invisible in the dystopian future, the lower class of today is difficult to notice. I had never really come face to face with the reality of poverty or homelessness until I visited the homeless shelter. Oranges had not seemed like a luxury to me until the little girl mistakenly bit into the fruit, whole. The joy that illuminated her face after her first taste of an orange will forever stay imprinted on my mind. I realized then that I want to continue bringing light to the dark lives of people like this child.
Now that there is a need for change, my intelligence has come fully to life. I have a newfound ambition, a driving force, in me that animates my life. As I begin with these small but significant deeds of giving joy, I hope to become a person who can help change the course that our world is headed. I know that with the aid of other intelligent minds all over the world, we can come up with a better alternative to the future of which H.G. Wells warns us.
Please tell me if this sounds like a book report or if I effectively integrated the quote/novel with my experience.
How do I come across as after reading this?
Thank you~
H.G. Wells, in The Time Machine, writes that "nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change." Perhaps that is why our world is overflowing with intelligent, bright, creative individuals today. We are so in need of change if we are to avoid a future like that in H.G. Well's novel. I realized this truth for myself during my freshman year when I visited a women and children's homeless shelter.
The children were extremely excited to see us. My service group was handing out gifts, but I was drawn to one child with wide, doe-like eyes. Her reaction to the orange I held out as a greeting was strange. She gingerly picked up the orange from my hand, carefully inspected it, and then suddenly sank her teeth right in. Taken aback, I gently taught the child how to peel the orange. In the present, I think back to this incident and wonder that society has come to the point where a child cannot even experience the simple joys of an orange. That day I had personally witnessed the very signs of class disparity that H.G. Wells critiques in The Time Machine.
Though it may seem unlikely for the world to develop one rich, comfortable class that makes the lower working class serve its every need, there are precursors today that should be taken as warning. Just as the Morlocks are nearly invisible in the dystopian future, the lower class of today is difficult to notice. I had never really come face to face with the reality of poverty or homelessness until I visited the homeless shelter. Oranges had not seemed like a luxury to me until the little girl mistakenly bit into the fruit, whole. The joy that illuminated her face after her first taste of an orange will forever stay imprinted on my mind. I realized then that I want to continue bringing light to the dark lives of people like this child.
Now that there is a need for change, my intelligence has come fully to life. I have a newfound ambition, a driving force, in me that animates my life. As I begin with these small but significant deeds of giving joy, I hope to become a person who can help change the course that our world is headed. I know that with the aid of other intelligent minds all over the world, we can come up with a better alternative to the future of which H.G. Wells warns us.
Please tell me if this sounds like a book report or if I effectively integrated the quote/novel with my experience.
How do I come across as after reading this?
Thank you~
