<p>I have a question for those who’ve written the Mad Hatter essay prompt.</p>
<p>I’m currently working on it myself (on more than a bit of a time crunch as I’m leaving on vacation soon), but wasn’t sure if my current idea adequately addresses the prompt.</p>
<p>I’ve mainly been toying with the idea of partially rolling over aspects of a skit I wrote for a lit project: a hypothetical “very special” episode of the Dr. Phil show featuring characters in existential literature. T.S. Eliot’s Hollow Men are in attendance and mistakenly diagnosed either as anorectics or overeaters depending on whether they profess to be “hollow” or “stuffed” (and finally urged to say, “We’re here, we’re hollow, get used to it.”) Meursault is generally an uncooperative sourpuss who smokes when he’s hungry and blames his hearing problems on the strength of the sun. </p>
<p>The advantage of rolling Dr. Phil over into a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party is that i can tell you exactly who gets dunked in the tea at the end (and if I want a tea pot of adequate proportions, I’ll probably commission it, thinking Michelangelo/Niki de St. Phale). My concerns are a) whether Dr. Phil could by any stretch fall under the blanket label of “disreputable figures” as he’s certainly neither literary nor historical and b) how I would write this to be revealing of my personality (besides, idk, pontificating on how nihilism is not a very pragmatic or generous philosophy- duh and duh). Does anyone have any suggestions on how to handle this aspect?</p>
<p>Yes, there is a very strong possibility that I’m overthinking this.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure you can include Dr. Phil…though he’s not literary or historical, he’s very well-known. I think the “disreputable figures” is just there so people don’t write in random teachers/friends they’ve known, which shows nothing of themselves if the adcoms don’t know those people.</p>
<p>As for your other question, I had the same problem. Most of my essay consisted of Adam Smith and Karl Marx in a huge fist fight and Salvador Dali painting on my arm. Only maybe the last 200 words (out of ~1100) addressed my views. My adm. counselor loved it.</p>
<p>Well, there was history involved as to why I’m at a party for ghosts. Dali had a bit of dialogue. It’s fairly interesting. The end involves carnivorous toilets.</p>
<p>Like everyone has said, just do what you want. I think a lot of the readers are probably getting sick of seeing thousands of essays about tea parties–your topic would be a refreshing spin on the prompt, and it sounds GREAT. Just do it!</p>
<p>*me.duh–I was going to do the tea party question and have Marx and Dali in my essay too! I switched my prompt though; probably a good idea, since I don’t think they’d want to read ANOTHER essay like that.</p>