The Admission Essay

The Admission Essay He has a 50/50 chance of killing the lion or being killed by the lion. The hunter then considers the possibility of remaining frozen in time in this moment of uncertainty forever, where every possible outcome could still happen, but hasn’t happened yet. The hunter spends the rest of the story thinking through all the possible ramifications that come with choosing to exist only within a single second. He refers to this moment as “t zero,” where t is time, and the moment he is experiencing is point zero. Although staying at t zero is appealing, upon the end of the story the hunter must inevitably move through time into the next second where his fate will be decided. For example, the piece “t zero” is one of my favorites. This short story is about a hunter, Qfwfq, who has just fired an arrow at a lion. The lion leaps at the hunter, and in that second the hunter can’t tell if the arrow will miss or not. When my mom handed me Cosmicomicsin New York and said that I might like it, I was pretty skeptical. I am reluctant to fall in love with book someone recommends. I can see me, a year older, sitting inside, curled up around a book and blanket. The sun has set early, so a lamp is on, shining warm light onto the pages. Furthermore, they know this largely happens in discussions about Great Books around small tables. Having tasted this kind of discussion in high school, I will seek it out the rest of my life. This perspective is increasingly, and tragically, rare in a world obsessed with information and afraid of questions. Intellectual complacency even pervades higher education where students are more concerned with marketing themselves and acquiring credentials than pursuing truth and acquiring wisdom. The liturgy of every class-- beginning with a single question and every individual being addressed as Mr. or Ms.-- reflects a zealous love of truth. In the classroom, ideas and individuals are honored accordingly. Astoundingly, Johnnies spend every class with individuals who probably have entirely different career goals. In their honest pursuit of truth, they recognize that preparing for a career and to be fully human should be one and the same. But once I started it, I realized that I couldn’t help falling for it. Each one starts with a quote, which Calvino uses to explain and explore complex scientific theories. This is my favorite quotation from my favorite book, The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela. I read this book for the first time in eighth grade while exploring the causes and consequences of the Mexican revolution. I am not simply interested in St. John’s; I am mesmerized by it. The thought of reading forty books in class over the school year excites me. The image of being surrounded by people similar to me thrills me. The knowledge that this may be in my future invigorates me. There is not one book on its own that calls to me, but knowing they are on my horizon fills me with anticipation. For example, he takes the reader through the creation of the universe, mitosis and meiosis, theories about space and time, dinosaurs, the moon, and many more. The complex tapestries he weaves are hauntingly beautiful, sharing only a common narrator, the ageless Qfwfq, who relays each story as though having witnessed it. A roommate is across from me reading the same book, and every couple minutes we stop to comment. I stayed up late the night before reading a different book, and though we have only just started reading this one, we are both hooked. Every part of the model and curriculum at St. John’s encourages an honest pursuit of truth, but the classroom discussions most of all.