essay... - Page 4

2tiredofwaiting · 03-29-2005, 08:14 PM

Very, very clever. I think it will do you well (or did you well--decisions are probably all made by now). Bene tibi!

Littleol'me · 03-29-2005, 09:54 PM

reading these essays on favorite words is making mine sound even more ridiculous than I already knew it was...very nice essay, ballboy.

jamminjb5 · 03-29-2005, 10:32 PM

I like that essay!

barski222 · 03-29-2005, 10:57 PM

In retrospect I am surprised by how weird my essay is:

I was in 8th grade when I encountered supercilious for the first time. As soon as its five syllables hit my ears I was in love. The word has the consistency of Jell-O being sucked through a straw. It slides and oozes as every syllable squeezes into the next so that they are hardly distinguishable. I was dismayed to discover the word’s meaning. How can it be “arrogant, proud, showing haughty disdain?” That can’t be right! It should be “smooth, slippery, or difficult to keep hold of.” But, sadly, I must constantly endeavor to avoid any connection with this euphonious sound. I am like a male Hester Prynne who must shun closeness with the object of my desire. I must reject my feelings for fear of the scarlet “S.” I can admire supercilious from the shadows and, if lucky, use it occasionally.

Supercilious slips around the thesaurus touching every word it can. Not many words can boast both “cavalier” and “sniffy” as synonyms?

It is ever moving; there are no sharp consonants to stop the tongue, no rough-hewn edges to stumble over. It flows like a beautiful viper across a glassy pond hypnotizing its prey. The word is at once beautiful and bitingly depressing. Like a siren, its sound draws you in with lilting splendor before dashing you on the rocks of definition.

kellyelly · 03-29-2005, 11:23 PM

awesome! i like how you wrote about liking the actual word rather than its meaning

wouldbemd · 03-29-2005, 11:35 PM

barski, very nice essay - flows well and is original

Littleol'me · 03-30-2005, 01:12 AM

barski, that's similar to what I did with bubble, but I think yours is much better, especially with what you connect it to. I actually had to check where you were from because I have a friend who has said your entire first paragraph(up untile the hester prynne reference) as her reasons for loving the word "supercilious."

talkingapple88 · 03-30-2005, 06:09 PM

barski, i absolutely LOVE your essay. (And I agree that supercilious is a great word, by the way.)

Reading all these is making me a bit insecure about my own essay...I did the diversity one. I'm from England, so I just wrote about that. I won't post my whole essay, but my first line was "I was nine when i became an alien." I thought it would be pretty easy to write, but it turned out to be a bit difficult to talk about diversity without sounding really corny, like "Everyone's unique in their own special way, now let's all hold hands and sing 'cum bye yah,'" or something.

herestoyou · 03-30-2005, 06:57 PM

I wrote about changing bodies with my cat. I thought it was cute and clever. I never flat out said "this is why I want to live like a cat..." I just went though a typical day as a cat. I hope they liked it!

chocoholicgirl · 03-30-2005, 07:34 PM

now you've got me curious . . . what do you guys think of my essays?

Last summer, while visiting a museum in the Doge's Palace in Venice, Italy, I came across several paintings by the 15th century Dutch artist, Hieronymus Bosch. Bosch's paintings, depicting mostly religious scenes of heaven, hell, the garden of Eden, and the crucifixion of Christ, both shocked and bewildered me. His paintings featured scenes of chaos and human torment, showing unfamiliar and grotesque monsters, gruesome human death, and oversized tools and animals. Everything in his paintings seemed to be misplaced or misused. Giant muscle shells served as beds. Funnels with arms carried hammers, and what looked like human organs floated in midair or were scattered on the ground.

The confusion of bizarre details in his paintings fascinated and confounded me. However, what really perplexed me was the fact that Bosch had painted these pieces in the 1400's, and some of his paintings were actually painted as church pieces. Having just seen many other religious pictures from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries portraying religion in a very respectful and orthodox manner, there seemed to be a world of difference between Bosch's artwork and the other artwork of his time. I wondered how on earth Bosch's work could have been permitted and appreciated in his own time, but I admired the originality and courage of the artist for conceiving these paintings. Further, I wondered what Bosch might have wanted to portray through his images. Obviously, he had a very unique and frightening view of what heaven, hell, and Eden were like. Some of his pictures of heaven and Eden seemed little more peaceful than his pictures of hell. But why did he portray a saint gazing at a tiny, distorted human, and why did he portray fish with clothes on in the stories of the Bible, and why did he portray a vase growing in a tree in the story of Christ? Was it religious symbolism? Was he secretly angry with the church? Was he insane, or just an original thinker? Did he just want to compel people to think about religion? This extremely original artist greatly challenged what I thought I had known about medieval art and beliefs.

c) "We might say that we were looking for global schemas, symmetries, universal and unchanging laws--and what we have discovered is the mutable, the ephemeral, the complex." Support or challenge Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigogine's assertion.

Like Ilya Prigogine, while seeking order I have stumbled upon mystery. It is in my nature, and in the nature of all human beings, to want answers. Most humans perceive the world and look for order, patterns, logic, and predictability in it. Ultimately, we want to feel that we have found knowledge, explanations, wholeness, solutions, and fulfillment. We humans, often subconsciously, feel that gaining this understanding will give us control over the world that we live in by creating an educated basis for making the decisions that we make.

I know I, myself, want this complete knowledge. That, I believe, is why I have always enjoyed math so much. Math is logical. It is based on patterns, and in math there is almost always only one correct answer. This certainty is very satisfying. However, certainty is only one aspect of knowledge. This year, spurred by an excellent literature teacher, I, the math aficionado, began to view knowledge, literature, and life in a different manner. Studying literature with this teacher helped me learn how to perceive the world without looking for answers in it. Literature, unlike math, is unanswerable and mutable; there is always more that can be learned from great literature because great literature never stops teaching. Reading a work of literature, one might briefly believe that they have gained the complete knowledge, the answer, to all that the work of literature can provide. However, the feelings and thoughts provoked by literature are only partial and fleeting. The answer to the work can never fully be gained. Complexities, in literature and in life, have always surrounded me, but, until now, I have never enjoyed dealing with them. Appreciating literature helped me to appreciate the mystery and wonder of life. The satisfying predictability of math can teach us much, but literature, I believe, may give a truer view of the world and its infinite and enigmatic nature. Change and uncertainty, which are themselves predictable, make life more intriguing.

wouldbemd · 03-30-2005, 08:39 PM

chocoholicgirl, both essays are very well written and flow beautifully.

I think that the second will serve you better than the first since it offers some insight into you as a person.

vip747 · 11-06-2009, 09:04 PM

HAHA
thats my favorite word

*Dean J* · 11-07-2009, 02:06 PM

I will read this thread more thoroughly on Monday, but please be careful about posting your essays. Sad to say, but I believe there could be people here interested in lifting your essays and using them for themselves or on "advice" websites. Contact a moderator if you want to delete a post with your essay in it.

vip747 · 11-07-2009, 02:08 PM

lmao QFT dean j

i liked the last topic choice: 'We might say that we were looking for global schemas, symmetries, universal and unchanging laws - and what we have discovered is the mutable, the ephemeral, the complex.' Support or challenge Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigogine's assertion.

that what ended up writing

*Dean J* · 11-07-2009, 02:10 PM

I know the thread is very old, but I don't want anyone to come in today and follow the example of those from a few years ago.

Don't post your essays anywhere on College Confidential!