<p>I wrote on #3. It was about the lessons we can learn from a metaphorical street called 100345 in the city of Eikville.</p>
<p>i wrote my own prompt about that was kind of like, tell us about a quality you had when you were younger that you don’t have anymore. I wrote a fictional (short) story about being born and trying to escape from the hospital in order to reclaim my previous home. I know it’s weird but I thought chicago might find it funny/intertesting/unusual. Also, I actually wrote the essay before the prompt and it took forever to end up writing a prompt to fit with my essay lol.</p>
<p>I wrote #2, zoom in zoom out, about the brain and consciousness. I liked it a lot :D</p>
<p>I wrote about #3. a highway of lifeeee</p>
<p>I wrote # 1 live the question. My whole essay was in question form besides the conclusion … basically questioning what makes the perfect essay and what makes the perfect chicago student. Im pretty proud of it</p>
<p>I wrote about the “tell a story about a road”. I pretty much had the most fun writing this one compared to all of the other essays I’ve written.</p>
<p>I wrote the particle accelerator one. I think that was #4? It came out… crazy.</p>
<p>And yes, I did the optional one.</p>
<p>i wrote the “zoom in and out” and i wrote about zooming in and out of a country</p>
<p>i wrote the optional one on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban</p>
<p>i did particle accelerator.
i mixed yes and no. it was strange little world I created.
At the time I thought it was really cool and unique but looking back I think " yes and no" was probabley way too generic.</p>
<p>I wrote my own: </p>
<p>** Prior to 1983, the Roman Catholic Church included two lawyers in its canonization process: one called the advocatus dei–God’s advocate, and one called the advocatus diaboli–the Devil’s advocate. The advocatus dei’s job was the defend the prospective saint’s canonization, citing the saint’s good works and dedication to God. The advocatus diaboli opposed this lawyer and argued against the canonization, discrediting the saint’s holiness, seeking out flaws in the saint’s character, and bringing to light every reason the saint should not be a saint. </p>
<p>You stand for admission to the University of Chicago. Your teacher recommendations, school record, interview, earlieressays, and unwavering love for the university are your advocatus dei. Now provide the other side of the story. Be your own Devil’s advocate. **</p>
<p>I was just so sick of writing about how wonderful I am.</p>
<p>I feel terribly uncreative. I did #2 (Powers of Ten) about a scientist…it was really random and not particularly related to me. So I’m pretty scared about my essay.</p>
<p>wow orual my friend wrote about the EXACT same thing</p>
<p>good topic anyways</p>
<p>I wrote about living the question. My essay was a grand tying-together of quantum physics, mathematical logic, cognitive science, metaphysics, and Zen Buddhism, with some truly off-the-wall metaphors and lots of my own philosophy about life. I’m not sure how well it worked.</p>
<p>I wrote about living the question. I talked about the Catholic Church and universal truth and how answers were constants in an inconstant world and how if we really wanted answers we would stop asking questions.</p>
<p>I kind of hated it.</p>
<p>i did the particle accelerator one. decided to write about rock, paper, and scissors. i feel like that’s a bit uncreative, but i enjoyed writing it. here’s a bit from mine.</p>
<p>Rock is always the first name pronounced in a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS), due to its primacy. Rock is among the first of all things, present long before paper or scissors. Harsh, brutal, unthinking and unfeeling, it is representative of all that is primal in man. From a more archetypal perspective, though, rocks are indicative of stability. Religious examples such as St. Peter (whose name literally means rock) and the Muslim Hajr-al-Aswad, both of which provided stability for their faiths, illustrate the connection (Deus ex Rockina, perhaps). In an RPS match, a player’s instinct is to switch to the safety of Rock when they begin to lose, indicative of the sense of security which is offered by that particular entity. Rock represents the meeting point of Man’s need for security and his primal instincts: war, which has existed nearly as long as rocks have and remains a core element of the human condition. We cannot escape it, just as we cannot escape rocks. In a sense, our society is built on Rock: our buildings of actual rocks, and our societies and nations on Rock’s representative entity, War. Based on this, it is no surprise that a rookie RPS player often relies primarily on Rock, seeking to metaphorically bludgeon his opponents with brute force. However, while a base, primal choice, the fundamental security and strength of Rock, a sort of inner peace through outward projection of power, should never be overlooked, lest one find his Scissors smashed to bits.</p>
<p>Wow, the “devil’s advocate” prompt is really cool.</p>
<p>^ Yeah, it is. Had it been one of the prompts, I porbably would have done that one.</p>
<p>I made one up for number five; it was a question that stemmed from an interesting phenomenon I noticed:</p>
<p>We are all swimming in memes. Memetics, the study of self-replicating ideas and behaviors, is a term coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. A steadfast Neo-Darwinist, Dawkins asserts that memes evolve by natural selection, a species of their own. This is a loaded idea; memes can evolve so that those most beneficial to the host survive, but detrimental memes that replicate effectively spread even better. Describe an idea, behavior, or phenomenon—real or imagined, harmful or beneficial, human or animal—that is currently or on the verge of spreading faster than the bubonic plague in a damp, rat infested alley. </p>
<p>I made a comparison between squirrels procrastinating crossing a street (waiting until just before you hit them) and star students procrastinating; we all need the most extreme shots of adrenaline to counteract the all-pervasive apathy of the world. I can post if someone likes but I am not fully comfortable posting my essay on the site…</p>
<p>and oural, what a fantastic prompt</p>
<p>Oural, ditto. VERY Chicago.</p>