shruthibaskaran

I just submitted my application and in the place where they ask about what you find humorous, I actually wrote a poem... !!!

I said that I find poems intellectually humorous and as an example I wrote a poem that I had earlier written when I was feeling particularly comical

Was it a bad idea? Now looking back on it, I am having a few doubts....

lalaloo6

Lol, you're supposed to use humor in that essay. I wrote my two favorite math jokes.

shruthibaskaran

Aldo, on an unrelated topic, in Caltech bioengineering comes under the academic division of biology right? 'Cos I put that as my first option for majors after I read somewhere in the website I think, that bioengineering came under Biology... Help???

shruthibaskaran

yea, i know that! i just wanted to know if writing a poem seemed ok

Hriundeli

I had a poem in my EA application....

dLo

BioE is under Engineering and Applied Science, but seeing as how there is no undergrad major in BioE currently, it's not a big deal what you put down.

tapedDuck

... do you use humor in the essay or just talk about something humorous???

jackwang

Well. The trouble for me is, the humorous things I usually share with my friends are quite R-rated. Yes, they very funny according to me. BUT, by mentioning the detail, would I get rejected immediately?

PLEASE HELP

aurona

@jackwang: I'd choose something else.. There's gotta be something else that's funny to you. Otherwise... I'm scared.

jackwang

@aurona: I actually link that humorous things for me with ethical dilemma I'm discussing. The theme of my ethical dilemma surrounds the usage of obscene language, and I think it really shows how I can ponder about the philosophical/macroscopic aspect of ethics, so I choose it. About the humorous things I am writing, one example is that my friends and I have fun creating our own vocabulary that replaces the conventional obscene one.

Or can I just talk about "ironies" that I find very amusing? For example, our school biology teacher once tried to teach how to use contraceptive while she's pregnant herself.......

Or, can any one just read my article? I can just PM you if you guys are interested to see.

aurona

@jackwang: Alright, I'll take a look before I say anything else.

aurona

@tapedDuck: Both?

rainynightstarz

I was going to write about The Game that spread through math club science club, robotics club, JETS and all the math competitions in the area, and how we would confuse the proctors hehe ... I LOST! .. then my friend stole my idea. so i ended up writing about how these lil kids(not that lil, some were taller than me) i was teaching/mentoring over the summer ended up calculating a 0:720 for gear ratio.
(they also ended up burning me when i tried to teach them how to solder -_-)

lalaloo6

jackwang- uhh... the bio teacher and the contraceptive thing doesn't seem that ironic to me... sometimes people just want to have kids you know :-) just saying. also, I would think R-rated would not be appropriate, though I think others have already said that. *shrug*

jackwang

to lalaloo6: True, I think the same too for the R-rated materials I'm writing. *Literally*, they are not R-rated, but the messages implied are. Maybe it's just a bit unfortunate that all my friends love to make fun of people somewhat in an intrusive way. You know, I don't want Caltech adcoms feel that I'm a mental pervert or something.

Any way, I will just finish my article and PM it to aurona for evaluation.