Writing An Admissions Essay To Get Into Top Schools

Writing An Admissions Essay To Get Into Top Schools This novel is a clear reminder that people have potential and must not choose an easy path in life. Each individual must pave their own way to achieve true happiness. The description of art under the regime is one of my favorite aspects of the novel. The artists’ association, MASSOLIT, depicts how artists operated in the Soviet Union. Until then, being Polish meant little more to me than having a second passport, wearing a traditional dress on holidays, and having a passel of cousins across the ocean. Being Polish was a part of me, but not something I paid much attention to. This epic is not only a great bookâ€"it is the great book of Poland, as important and symbolic as the Vistula River that flows from the Polish mountains to the Baltic sea. Constitution, Poles are required to memorize sections of Pan Tadeusz, especially those which are thought to embody the core of what it means to be Polish. A Pole reciting the opening of Pan Tadeusz is like an American reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. He has always encouraged me to have my own personal outlook and opinion. I think he believes that conformity undermines intellectual potentialâ€"an opinion I now strongly agree with. Moreover, he has taught me to stand my ground and be perceptive. The critical viewpoint I have grown into has trained me not to take things for granted and to be inquisitive. So, in a way, The Master and Margarita has helped me to understand my father and appreciate him as an outsider, an individualist. The poem’s lyrical Alexandrines transported me back to Poland, especially when the words were softly murmured, huddled underneath blankets, the pages illuminated with a flickering flashlight. I first began reading Pan Tadeusz when I was thirteen. And perhaps because it was my decision to read this epic, my reaction to it was stronger than it otherwise would have been. The obsession with following narrow dreams that I see in my peers is part of today’s conformism. The drive to conform to a standard so as to avoid standing out has become more and more apparent. However, the society depicted in the novel accepts such conformism to urvive, whereas the young generation can take individual freedom for granted. I have also become an individualist who tries to defy the conformism around him. I live in a newly independent society that still has remnants of the old, Soviet conformism, and, instead of freeing itself, it has begun to bury itself in it. Its author, Adam Mickiewicz, is considered something of a literary god, somewhere between Dante and Shakespeare. Self-confidence is something I have struggled very long and hard with. I used to worry that I would stand outâ€"especially in school. The views of my society are rather one dimensional towards being different. It impedes creativity and critical thinking, but these are essential in raising questions and seeing beyond the obvious. Instead, my peers choose to follow similar paths of education and career . At an early age they are asked to choose their path for life. Avoiding conformism and pre-set structures lets people see the world in different colors and leads to self-discovery. Art is used as a propaganda tool, and the state controls art through bribery. It is ironic to see artists, whose independence is essential for the creative process, being manipulated by the state through petty materialistic entitlements. Artists here worry more about the size of summer house they will receive for their vacation than their work. When the value of their work is questioned, they affirm their lack of talent; yet their social position is too valuable to give up, as reflected in the thoughts of the poet Riuchin. When a poet who has met the devil calls Riuchin a talentless artist, he accepts the claim and inwardly agrees that he does not believe in his writing. It was all at once a beautiful and harrowing experience. Much like an individual doesn’t realize how hungry she is until she takes a bite of food, my intellectual hunger rose and demanded that I feast. I began to question the ideas behind my everyday actions regardless of whether other people thought this was a relevant line of inquiry or not. Out of this confusion and curiosity, my AP Research paper on the nature of open-mindedness as an intellectual virtue in epistemology emerged. Readers at the time of the book’s publication would have remembered these, their imaginations leaving Paris for the Polish countryside. When reflecting that becoming part of this society would lead me to self-hatred, I have come to see Master as an example. The hardship he undergoes and the courage he portrays afterwards have inspired me to embrace who I am.