College Application Essay Examples

College Application Essay Examples Just death, of everyone and everything, as Aslan, the Jesus-like lion and creator of Narnia, leads the dead spirits of all Narnians, including most of the main characters, to…Narnia. Where, as the characters describe, the world was exactly the same as Narnia…but Truer. I, all artists, and those seeking some sort of universal truth, must try to achieve that purest, most visceral understanding. That idea, presented in Plato’s work, had not yet become clear to me, until I finished reading The Last Battle. It was as if the world finally came to terms with your mind. Like waking up from a dream to realize a truer, better world, the Narnians were led to the truest and most awoken state. It is a simple parable that reminds of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, where one man emerges from a lifetime of staring at shadows dancing on a cave wall to a real and vibrant and three-dimensional world. He said only understanding yourself and your enemy guarantees victory. He said winning without fighting is the greatest victory. I think we can’t resolve conflicts, avoid wars, or maintain stability without understanding ourselves and our neighbors. I think understanding is more important than ever, because people of almost any culture can be found in almost every country. Some of our neighbors have F1 visas and sit next to us in school. Eventually the couple is able to guide themselves into ever more elaborate notations as they attempt to build proofs to solidify these connected ideas about numbers. The book goes surprisingly far into defining numbers, including advanced concepts such as infinitesimals and the different levels of infinity. This helped me to better understand what numbers are and that I had not appreciated all of the work that had gone into defining them for our use today. C.S. Lewis himself was a big fan of Plato; his works were the key that allowed me to decipher the meaning encoded in the Plato that I had read. The Last Battle was the spark that gave me hope, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave gave me strength, and Plato’s Republic is what gave me the intellectual confidence in the presence of the ideal and the universal. His ability to so perfectly enunciate why we must never lose hope, and always struggle towards the ideal. Some of our neighbors become citizens of our country and permanently change and enrich our national identity. Western military personnel and aid workers are side-by-side with tribal fighters and indigenous community leaders, combating terrorism, lawlessness, and poverty. We are becoming a rich gumbo, not a homogenous puree. Rowling’s Harry Potter series was published, I was in third grade. In this way they were Socrates-- and I was the student who ended up understanding more than I anticipated, or was expected to, because of the way I was carefully led by the author and his characters. There are no other works that best exemplify that power of words and ideas have had on my life and my outlook on it. My teachers, although they tried, were unable to explain things to me and I, to be fair, was not great at listening to their explanations. The only time I loved math was sophomore year when we did proofs. They were puzzles and fascinating in a way that other math wasn’t. I downloaded the rest of the course selections and printed them out. In the weeks leading up to my departure, I trekked to the nearby field with my dog and my books, and I sat at the picnic table overlooking the woods. I dove into Aristotle and Thucydides while my dog investigated the nearby smells. Every evening, I ticked off the days on the calendar, counting down to the day I would fly from Michigan to Santa Fe. As a result, my grades suffered and I’ve spent most of my time in math class frustrated, confused, and upset. My family bought three copies so my mom, my dad and I could all read it immediately. Rowling’s stories about a boy growing up, having misadventures and facing his destiny enraptured me, but the real witchcraft was in her words. I had read Plato’s Republic, his Allegory of the Cave, and various dialogues in my sophomore year; I was surprisingly only finishing the Narnia series in my junior year. The end of the book, and thus the Narnia series, is death.