Soo, here's my essay...comments please:)

smartterturtle
Sun, 08 Oct 2006 18:52:57 +0000

Here’s my essay, I even included the prompt…I would appreciate it if you gave me some feedback. Thanks a ton.

*Students at Notre Dame are passionate! Their passion gives direction and definition to campus academic, community, and spiritual life. Recognizing that you have already provided us with a list of your extracurricular activities, please briefly describe your greatest passion and tell us how it defines and directs you.

It is not entirely easy for me to define my singular passion in life, because my personality is really just a hodgepodge of all my passions. However, I believe I can limit them to the two that stand out in my mind, the ones that drove me to apply to Notre Dame.
The first of these passions is music. Music is something that I spend a great deal of time on and definitely something that I plan to pursue in college. My brother’s piano teacher actually suggested that I check out Notre Dame a few years ago. After exploring the band website, as well as the Notre Dame Saxes website, I fell in love with ND. During a campus visit, I walked into the band building, and the people inside gave my family a tour, as well as a DVD of the Band of the Fighting Irish in action. There is a point in the DVD when the band is playing Livin’ On a Prayer and the student section is singing along. It probably sounds foolish, but it is at this point that I begin to tear up. Why? Maybe it’s the camaraderie, maybe there’s a certain note in the song that affects my sinuses, but I think it’s because a band like that is one that I would love to be a member of. Then, of course, because I play the alto saxophone, the Collegiate Jazz Festival is a dream come true. Whether I’m playing, or just listening, jazz and swing are my favorite genres of music. Music has given me an extended family, which is something that can come in handy. Music has also given me the confidence to stand alone, when I must, as well as the ability to cooperate with others.
My other passion is NASA. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an organization that has given me a reason to keep taking hard classes and challenge myself. When I was in elementary school, a series of framed pictures were in the main hallway of the school, one of Christa McAuliffe, one of the crew of STS-51 and one of a successful Space Shuttle Challenger launch. Though Challenger and the crew in those photos have passed on, their legacy lives on in the proposed Crew Exploration Vehicle. I believe it is because of them, though indirectly, that I plan to major in engineering. Since my first experience at NASA-sponsored workshops in elementary school, I have had the opportunity of shadowing two engineers at NASA Glenn Research Center, each working on different projects and each making me more certain that engineering is a career I want to pursue. Notre Dame has everything a budding engineer could want academically and having a good faith base would undoubtedly be a major asset, especially around finals time.
If ever there was a better way to fuse my two passions, I would love to attempt it. Until then, I’ll settle for being a saxophone playing rocket scientist.