<p>must it be an actual table? must it really occupy an actual time and place? how do i talk about all the different groups of people i encounter in life, if it has to be an actual table?</p>
<p>or could it just be a table that i carry around in my mind? can i just talk about the table in my mind then as how i treat and interact with people?</p>
<p>I think that for them there would be no limit. If I were an admission officers, I would really be as equally interested in what an applicant has in mind as a “table”. I didn’t write my essay on the tables, but I would have written it on a table of my own. I say go for it :).</p>
<p>For Chicago? It can be anything. It does not need to be real. It doesn’t even actually have to be a TABLE of the conventional sort. Be creative. The question welcomes it.</p>
<p>I was going to write that I didn’t have a table because my family eats off the floor…
Yeah, it was really late at night when I thought of that…</p>
<p>table (n.)
c.1175, “board, slab, plate,” from O.Fr. table “board, plank, writing table, picture” (11c.), and late O.E. tabele, from W.Gmc. *tabal (cf. O.H.G. zabel, Ger. Tafel), both from L. tabula “a board, plank, table,” originally “small flat slab or piece” usually for inscriptions or for games, of uncertain origin, related to Umbrian tafle “on the board.” The sense of “piece of furniture with the flat top and legs” first recorded c.1300 (the usual L. word for this was mensa; O.E. writers used bord). The meaning “arrangement of numbers or other figures for convenience” is recorded from c.1386 (e.g. table of contents, 1460).</p>
<p><em>hint hint</em></p>
<p>I’m sure that some math nerd will interpret this essay as a chance to talk about the table of statistics he has in Excel. ;-)</p>
<p>yougotjohn – surely you mean a statistics or numerical analysis nerd?</p>
<p>I believe you have a tabula rasa with which to work …</p>
<p>Being a chem nerd myself, I considered writing about my homies on the periodic table… (what was inspired there, who finds a place there and why… it fits, no?)</p>
<p>lol la montagne, but do your homies on the periodic table really make up your ** community**?</p>
<p>lol probably, rumor has it that hydrogen and oxygen are pretty damn important. Also I can probably find some Hg and some Pb around the house. Oh and… well you get the point.</p>
<p>Oxygen is a traitor.</p>
<p>Sure, you need it as a terminal electron acceptor, but other than that it’s pretty unruly in the body. A great corrupting influence.</p>
<p>Yeah, they definitely make up my community. I mean, look outside your window–everyone and everything out there is made of chemical elements. =P So yes… they quite LITERALLY are the composition of my community. :)</p>
<p>hmmm… if u read the entire prompt, especially the part about professors and students dinner table, ur chem idea migjht seem abit like pushing it. i think however open-ended the prompt is, the adcom is really interested about the people. but then again, its uchicago, so you never know :D</p>
<p>did you really go through with the idea in the end? :P</p>