Admissions Essay Samples, Personal Statement Of Purpose Samples From 10+ Colleges

Admissions Essay Samples, Personal Statement Of Purpose Samples From 10+ Colleges I am forever grateful to Pride and Prejudice for reigniting the passion for reading I had lost in middle school. The move to Texas was one of the hardest transitions in my life as I was greeted with a culture shock and had to reinvent myself. On an almost daily basis I was asked to defend my views on a subject, but my debating skills were limited to logical fallacies and ad hominem attacks so I wasn’t too successful. In my eyes it didn’t matter what I said because I was right and they were wrong. The Book Thief refuses to flee from this ambiguity. Instead, the characters within its pages are mixtures of everything and its opposite. My experience of Lolita is intrinsically connected to the discussions I had with my brother. Lolita inspired in me a fervent hunger for discussion of truth. By the time high school rolled around, that girl was nowhere to be found. The notion that prejudice clouds perception was a truth that I don’t imagine I’d have come to as early without the help of Austen and it made me wonder how much more I could learn from reading. After that I became obsessed with reading, falling into my old habits of staying up late to read the last chapter, staying in to read at lunch, and going to the library every weekend. A Pole reciting the opening of Pan Tadeusz is like an American reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Its author, Adam Mickiewicz, is considered something of a literary god, somewhere between Dante and Shakespeare. The novel focuses on ways the Soviet regime exerted its power on its people. Coming from a post-Soviet country still struggling with its past, where some adore past times while others despise them, I am interested in how the regime worked to indoctrinate people. In California my peers and I had shared the same views. We were all so liberal which at the time felt like a blessing, but when I got to Texas it seemed as though everywhere I went my ideas were challenged. After years and years of being told what to think and the “right” questions to ask, I had retreated into intellectual paralysis. I would uncomprehendingly coast through my classes, molding my knowledge to fit the next quiz and promptly forgetting it afterwards. School didn’t require, and at times, actively discouraged my insatiable desire to figure out the puzzles of the world, so I shoved that side of myself away and forgot that it even existed. 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. For fear of being next to disappear or jealousy because someone lives a tiny bit better than you, espionage and treason become a normal part of life. This sense of clarity I received, was due in part to Pride and Prejudice because even though it did not provide me with the answers to my questions, it had given me a sense of self awareness. The story’s protagonist, Liesel Meminger, learns this lesson through her experiences in Nazi Germany, a place and time in which we are often inclined to believe that good and evil existed as separate entities. The Book Thief introduces a myriad cast of characters and thrusts them into the polarizing world of Nazi Germany. Not one of the book’s characters can be defined in terms of “good” and “evil,” or “right” and “wrong.” Rather, they are all unequivocally human, for better or for worse. The one absolute truth to our existence is the divide between life and deathâ€"and, some may argue that death is the only cessation of our humanity. Although the novel is not a history book, its presentation of characters helps to crystallize the essence of what the Soviet Union looked like. The fact of it being a literary work has made it easier for me to comprehend and visualize the historical period which was so devastating to my country. The novel helped me understand that the harder an ideology is pushed on people, the harder they will rebel in indirect ways. The constant fear turned people into animals willing to do anything to survive. After reading Lolita, my brother and I spent the following days dissecting every minute detail, trying to find some kind of understanding of Lolita. We searched together for insight, sat up late after dinner arguing about whether or not Humbert loved Dolores, and what the final meeting between Humbert and Dolores meant.

Admissions Essay Samples, Personal Statement Of Purpose Samples From 10+ Colleges

Admissions Essay Samples, Personal Statement Of Purpose Samples From 10+ Colleges I am forever grateful to Pride and Prejudice for reigniting the passion for reading I had lost in middle school. The move to Texas was one of the hardest transitions in my life as I was greeted with a culture shock and had to reinvent myself. On an almost daily basis I was asked to defend my views on a subject, but my debating skills were limited to logical fallacies and ad hominem attacks so I wasn’t too successful. In my eyes it didn’t matter what I said because I was right and they were wrong. The Book Thief refuses to flee from this ambiguity. Instead, the characters within its pages are mixtures of everything and its opposite. My experience of Lolita is intrinsically connected to the discussions I had with my brother. Lolita inspired in me a fervent hunger for discussion of truth. By the time high school rolled around, that girl was nowhere to be found. The notion that prejudice clouds perception was a truth that I don’t imagine I’d have come to as early without the help of Austen and it made me wonder how much more I could learn from reading. After that I became obsessed with reading, falling into my old habits of staying up late to read the last chapter, staying in to read at lunch, and going to the library every weekend. A Pole reciting the opening of Pan Tadeusz is like an American reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Its author, Adam Mickiewicz, is considered something of a literary god, somewhere between Dante and Shakespeare. The novel focuses on ways the Soviet regime exerted its power on its people. Coming from a post-Soviet country still struggling with its past, where some adore past times while others despise them, I am interested in how the regime worked to indoctrinate people. In California my peers and I had shared the same views. We were all so liberal which at the time felt like a blessing, but when I got to Texas it seemed as though everywhere I went my ideas were challenged. After years and years of being told what to think and the “right” questions to ask, I had retreated into intellectual paralysis. I would uncomprehendingly coast through my classes, molding my knowledge to fit the next quiz and promptly forgetting it afterwards. School didn’t require, and at times, actively discouraged my insatiable desire to figure out the puzzles of the world, so I shoved that side of myself away and forgot that it even existed. 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. For fear of being next to disappear or jealousy because someone lives a tiny bit better than you, espionage and treason become a normal part of life. This sense of clarity I received, was due in part to Pride and Prejudice because even though it did not provide me with the answers to my questions, it had given me a sense of self awareness. The story’s protagonist, Liesel Meminger, learns this lesson through her experiences in Nazi Germany, a place and time in which we are often inclined to believe that good and evil existed as separate entities. The Book Thief introduces a myriad cast of characters and thrusts them into the polarizing world of Nazi Germany. Not one of the book’s characters can be defined in terms of “good” and “evil,” or “right” and “wrong.” Rather, they are all unequivocally human, for better or for worse. The one absolute truth to our existence is the divide between life and deathâ€"and, some may argue that death is the only cessation of our humanity. Although the novel is not a history book, its presentation of characters helps to crystallize the essence of what the Soviet Union looked like. The fact of it being a literary work has made it easier for me to comprehend and visualize the historical period which was so devastating to my country. The novel helped me understand that the harder an ideology is pushed on people, the harder they will rebel in indirect ways. The constant fear turned people into animals willing to do anything to survive. After reading Lolita, my brother and I spent the following days dissecting every minute detail, trying to find some kind of understanding of Lolita. We searched together for insight, sat up late after dinner arguing about whether or not Humbert loved Dolores, and what the final meeting between Humbert and Dolores meant.

Admissions Essay Samples, Personal Statement Of Purpose Samples From 10+ Colleges

Admissions Essay Samples, Personal Statement Of Purpose Samples From 10+ Colleges I am forever grateful to Pride and Prejudice for reigniting the passion for reading I had lost in middle school. The move to Texas was one of the hardest transitions in my life as I was greeted with a culture shock and had to reinvent myself. On an almost daily basis I was asked to defend my views on a subject, but my debating skills were limited to logical fallacies and ad hominem attacks so I wasn’t too successful. In my eyes it didn’t matter what I said because I was right and they were wrong. The Book Thief refuses to flee from this ambiguity. Instead, the characters within its pages are mixtures of everything and its opposite. My experience of Lolita is intrinsically connected to the discussions I had with my brother. Lolita inspired in me a fervent hunger for discussion of truth. By the time high school rolled around, that girl was nowhere to be found. The notion that prejudice clouds perception was a truth that I don’t imagine I’d have come to as early without the help of Austen and it made me wonder how much more I could learn from reading. After that I became obsessed with reading, falling into my old habits of staying up late to read the last chapter, staying in to read at lunch, and going to the library every weekend. A Pole reciting the opening of Pan Tadeusz is like an American reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Its author, Adam Mickiewicz, is considered something of a literary god, somewhere between Dante and Shakespeare. The novel focuses on ways the Soviet regime exerted its power on its people. Coming from a post-Soviet country still struggling with its past, where some adore past times while others despise them, I am interested in how the regime worked to indoctrinate people. In California my peers and I had shared the same views. We were all so liberal which at the time felt like a blessing, but when I got to Texas it seemed as though everywhere I went my ideas were challenged. After years and years of being told what to think and the “right” questions to ask, I had retreated into intellectual paralysis. I would uncomprehendingly coast through my classes, molding my knowledge to fit the next quiz and promptly forgetting it afterwards. School didn’t require, and at times, actively discouraged my insatiable desire to figure out the puzzles of the world, so I shoved that side of myself away and forgot that it even existed. 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. For fear of being next to disappear or jealousy because someone lives a tiny bit better than you, espionage and treason become a normal part of life. This sense of clarity I received, was due in part to Pride and Prejudice because even though it did not provide me with the answers to my questions, it had given me a sense of self awareness. The story’s protagonist, Liesel Meminger, learns this lesson through her experiences in Nazi Germany, a place and time in which we are often inclined to believe that good and evil existed as separate entities. The Book Thief introduces a myriad cast of characters and thrusts them into the polarizing world of Nazi Germany. Not one of the book’s characters can be defined in terms of “good” and “evil,” or “right” and “wrong.” Rather, they are all unequivocally human, for better or for worse. The one absolute truth to our existence is the divide between life and deathâ€"and, some may argue that death is the only cessation of our humanity. Although the novel is not a history book, its presentation of characters helps to crystallize the essence of what the Soviet Union looked like. The fact of it being a literary work has made it easier for me to comprehend and visualize the historical period which was so devastating to my country. The novel helped me understand that the harder an ideology is pushed on people, the harder they will rebel in indirect ways. The constant fear turned people into animals willing to do anything to survive. After reading Lolita, my brother and I spent the following days dissecting every minute detail, trying to find some kind of understanding of Lolita. We searched together for insight, sat up late after dinner arguing about whether or not Humbert loved Dolores, and what the final meeting between Humbert and Dolores meant.

Admissions Essay Samples, Personal Statement Of Purpose Samples From 10+ Colleges

Admissions Essay Samples, Personal Statement Of Purpose Samples From 10+ Colleges I am forever grateful to Pride and Prejudice for reigniting the passion for reading I had lost in middle school. The move to Texas was one of the hardest transitions in my life as I was greeted with a culture shock and had to reinvent myself. On an almost daily basis I was asked to defend my views on a subject, but my debating skills were limited to logical fallacies and ad hominem attacks so I wasn’t too successful. In my eyes it didn’t matter what I said because I was right and they were wrong. The Book Thief refuses to flee from this ambiguity. Instead, the characters within its pages are mixtures of everything and its opposite. My experience of Lolita is intrinsically connected to the discussions I had with my brother. Lolita inspired in me a fervent hunger for discussion of truth. By the time high school rolled around, that girl was nowhere to be found. The notion that prejudice clouds perception was a truth that I don’t imagine I’d have come to as early without the help of Austen and it made me wonder how much more I could learn from reading. After that I became obsessed with reading, falling into my old habits of staying up late to read the last chapter, staying in to read at lunch, and going to the library every weekend. A Pole reciting the opening of Pan Tadeusz is like an American reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Its author, Adam Mickiewicz, is considered something of a literary god, somewhere between Dante and Shakespeare. The novel focuses on ways the Soviet regime exerted its power on its people. Coming from a post-Soviet country still struggling with its past, where some adore past times while others despise them, I am interested in how the regime worked to indoctrinate people. In California my peers and I had shared the same views. We were all so liberal which at the time felt like a blessing, but when I got to Texas it seemed as though everywhere I went my ideas were challenged. After years and years of being told what to think and the “right” questions to ask, I had retreated into intellectual paralysis. I would uncomprehendingly coast through my classes, molding my knowledge to fit the next quiz and promptly forgetting it afterwards. School didn’t require, and at times, actively discouraged my insatiable desire to figure out the puzzles of the world, so I shoved that side of myself away and forgot that it even existed. 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. For fear of being next to disappear or jealousy because someone lives a tiny bit better than you, espionage and treason become a normal part of life. This sense of clarity I received, was due in part to Pride and Prejudice because even though it did not provide me with the answers to my questions, it had given me a sense of self awareness. The story’s protagonist, Liesel Meminger, learns this lesson through her experiences in Nazi Germany, a place and time in which we are often inclined to believe that good and evil existed as separate entities. The Book Thief introduces a myriad cast of characters and thrusts them into the polarizing world of Nazi Germany. Not one of the book’s characters can be defined in terms of “good” and “evil,” or “right” and “wrong.” Rather, they are all unequivocally human, for better or for worse. The one absolute truth to our existence is the divide between life and deathâ€"and, some may argue that death is the only cessation of our humanity. Although the novel is not a history book, its presentation of characters helps to crystallize the essence of what the Soviet Union looked like. The fact of it being a literary work has made it easier for me to comprehend and visualize the historical period which was so devastating to my country. The novel helped me understand that the harder an ideology is pushed on people, the harder they will rebel in indirect ways. The constant fear turned people into animals willing to do anything to survive. After reading Lolita, my brother and I spent the following days dissecting every minute detail, trying to find some kind of understanding of Lolita. We searched together for insight, sat up late after dinner arguing about whether or not Humbert loved Dolores, and what the final meeting between Humbert and Dolores meant.

What Colleges Require Admission Essays? And Which Ones Require Supplemental Essays?

What Colleges Require Admission Essays? And Which Ones Require Supplemental Essays? You definitely don't want to write about your winning team. And nobody wants to read about your losing team, either. Financial education curriculum by Washington State Employees Credit Union. This Student Workbook was developed to help students link responsible financial habits and future success. Natural Leaders are K-12 parents from within the participating school’s community trained by WABS to coordinate parent engagement activities at the school. The Baylor College of Medicine is also known for its healthcare outreach programs, such as the Homeless Healthcare Program. This would allow you to serve vulnerable populations and understand how to best meet their long-term needs. For example, you could begin your essay with how your family was unable to afford doctor’s visits growing up, and how that impacted your wellbeing. Understand the school’s culture, and what looms large as seeming important to the school. Read about the history of the school, from foundation to the present. Get the salient aspects of the school into your essay. Speaking of Mike's essay title, be aware that titles can lend real impact to an essay if they are carefully thought out. After you have finished your essay's final revision and you're satisfied that it can't get much better, reread it one more time. Learn about the best education and career options available in technology, life skills, and more. In the end, being a successful student means getting the career you not only want but also deserve. The problem with these topics is not that they are depressing, but that such powerful topics can be challenging to write about. Absolutely no pet stories -- admission officers hate them. Schools do not want to hear about your church or school trip to another country or region to help the disadvantaged. You could close out your essay by explaining your goal to become a community-oriented physician and how you believe the Rice/Baylor Medical Scholars Program will best help you to achieve this goal. For example, Rice has a Social Policy Analysis major, which would allow you to understand the intersections of social policy and health. One day, you want to be able to change those policies to expand access to healthcare. Admissions offices are honed to know if the essay is portraying a person in an authentic way. If it rings false, your chances of getting admitted have fallen. The passion in your writing comes through when its true to you. Besides, this is the exciting part about writing the essay, you get to really let yourself shine. You may be able to write about a trip like this only if you focus on a specific experience within the broader trip. Do not write about drug use, drinking and driving, arrests or jail time. Also leave your sexual activities out of the frame. Even if you have abandoned your reckless ways, don't bring it up. Do you know how many millions of teens have written about scoring the winning goal, basket or run? The goal is to share how you respond in the face of a challenge, and what you learned from that specific experience. Struggling to connect with one of your math tutoring students for months, and finally discovering a more visual mode of learning that helps them succeed. Topic choice is crucial in responding to this prompt. While your adverse experience should convey hardship, the bulk of your response should focus on your response to this adversity. For example, the loss of a parent is devastating, but your essay should focus on how you used your pain to inspire you to give back to others or connect more deeply with your community. Look for one or two key aspects that you may be able to work into a title. That winter I walked around in my big, warm wool sweater complemented by my glistening shaved head. The adversity you choose doesn’t have to have a “happy ending.” The story you tell can have any trajectory, and the adversities that didn’t end in success can still make for extremely insightful essays. Choose adverse experiences that allow you to meaningfully demonstrate self growth. An everyday activity conveyed in a unique manner can showcase your creativity and help you stand out among the competition.

How To Write A Us College Admissions Essay

How To Write A Us College Admissions Essay My favorite aspect of studying at St. John’s was the environment of free discussion. I love that teachers and students alike go by the simple formal address. This practice helps to foster an atmosphere of respect and equality in the classroom, giving students the confidence to take intellectual risks. The students’ intellectual freedom lived on outside the classroom, inspiring our discussions of the readings over breakfast, during our afternoon free period, and during our evening group meetings. At seven o’clock the first evening, I was treated to my first seminar, and I fell in love with the school as well as its location. I came to class having read the story and enjoyed it. Unlike my classmates, I see books as worlds I can get lost in. I saw a statement about our significance in the world. The aforementioned aspects signify what makes Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita great in my opinion. Not only do the literary devices make it a wonder to read, but the way it discusses eternal human problems makes it a great book. When I went to the Summer Academy program last summer in Santa Fe, I found myself most looking forward to the math and science tutorials. While some others groaned that it was time to do our Archimedes reading for the next day, I excitedly isolated myself in the back of the library. I loved reading so closely and spending the time discovering Archimedes’ theories. At school I would have despised the lesson about water displacement but when I was given the actual works by Archimedes and had to follow the logic on my own it made sense. During the tutorial I loved how the tutor went line by line asking questions for us to discuss and I loved drawing out the diagrams. The work displays the Soviet society under immense repression and how it affects people’s mindsets. It also addresses the relationship between individuals and their community and time. It embraces individualism and faith as compasses to accomplishment. The third aspectâ€"that of conformismâ€"connects the novel with today and calls on the reader to think and reflect more deeply, to search for a unique identity. The experience of reading the story has taught me that raising questions and finding answers should be an indefinite, life-long process. We discussed Herodotus’s description of the Battle of Thermopylae. Our tutor, Ms. Shukla, posed the question, “Is bravery reasonable? ” My fellow students and I talked more quickly than I could jot down notes, and I left the classroom feeling more energized and awake than I had two hours before. On our way back to Murchison, my dorm mates and I compared notes on what we had discussed in our different seminars and talked about Leonidas and the Spartans until lights-out. I have already read some of the books in the curriculum once, and so now I will be able to ‘read a book,’ during my second round of reading and discussion at St. John’s. My junior year in particular was my most interesting round of humanities. It focused entirely on Greek works, starting with Homer and the playwrights, transitioning into Thucydides, and then on to Plato and Aristotle. I enjoyed reading and discussing these works very much. St. John’s is appealing because I will get to read some of my favorite texts for a second time, as well as many new works. In other words, Antigone humanized the esoteric and function-driven debates I’d studied last year. Finishing the play, I was ashamed that I’d harbored such skepticism at the outset of my reading. My experience with Antigone reminds me why I get excited each time I use calculus in physics or art in cooking, and I look forward to a lifetime of making these connections. I am a reader because I am a writer, not the other way around. Index cards, store receipts, and any other paper I can find, covered in notes I took, stick out of the tops of my books. J.K. Rowling clearly saw her application of appellations not as a burden, but an opportunity to enrich the story and world she had created and expand its reach. She leaves it to the readers to discover or concoct an explanation for why wizards shout bastardized Latin phrases to cast spells, stick their heads in fireplaces to chat with friends, and send letters via owl. An easy focus of Rowling’s accessible wordplay are the spells. Usually a crafted mix of Latin and English, their verbalization sounds “magical” but still allows readers to suss out a guess as to the spell’s purpose. As a high school Latin student, I find this especially impressive. Rowling’s incorporation of Latin, the foundation of many modern languages, lends the spells more universality (who wants spells in English, anyway?) and adds to the realism of the series. Antigone has become my favorite book because it wraps political and legal theory around complex characters and a compelling narrative. Prior to reading Antigone , I assumed that if I hadn’t read every book that pertained to the architecture of US government, I had at least heard of them. Antigone proved this assumption wrong because Antigone itself was a case study in the actual consequences of ideas discussed by political philosophers. I dream of a place where everyone enjoys books differently. There is greatness to be found in every book, but these are some of the writers that challenged what I thought to be true and opened the door to moral questions that will take more than my lifetime to answer. I hope to start answering these questions at St. John’s. My senior year, my class was assigned Kafka’s Metamorphosis. My peers neglected the reading, doing only what they had to do to maintain decent grades.

How To Write A Us College Admissions Essay

How To Write A Us College Admissions Essay My favorite aspect of studying at St. John’s was the environment of free discussion. I love that teachers and students alike go by the simple formal address. This practice helps to foster an atmosphere of respect and equality in the classroom, giving students the confidence to take intellectual risks. The students’ intellectual freedom lived on outside the classroom, inspiring our discussions of the readings over breakfast, during our afternoon free period, and during our evening group meetings. At seven o’clock the first evening, I was treated to my first seminar, and I fell in love with the school as well as its location. I came to class having read the story and enjoyed it. Unlike my classmates, I see books as worlds I can get lost in. I saw a statement about our significance in the world. The aforementioned aspects signify what makes Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita great in my opinion. Not only do the literary devices make it a wonder to read, but the way it discusses eternal human problems makes it a great book. When I went to the Summer Academy program last summer in Santa Fe, I found myself most looking forward to the math and science tutorials. While some others groaned that it was time to do our Archimedes reading for the next day, I excitedly isolated myself in the back of the library. I loved reading so closely and spending the time discovering Archimedes’ theories. At school I would have despised the lesson about water displacement but when I was given the actual works by Archimedes and had to follow the logic on my own it made sense. During the tutorial I loved how the tutor went line by line asking questions for us to discuss and I loved drawing out the diagrams. The work displays the Soviet society under immense repression and how it affects people’s mindsets. It also addresses the relationship between individuals and their community and time. It embraces individualism and faith as compasses to accomplishment. The third aspectâ€"that of conformismâ€"connects the novel with today and calls on the reader to think and reflect more deeply, to search for a unique identity. The experience of reading the story has taught me that raising questions and finding answers should be an indefinite, life-long process. We discussed Herodotus’s description of the Battle of Thermopylae. Our tutor, Ms. Shukla, posed the question, “Is bravery reasonable? ” My fellow students and I talked more quickly than I could jot down notes, and I left the classroom feeling more energized and awake than I had two hours before. On our way back to Murchison, my dorm mates and I compared notes on what we had discussed in our different seminars and talked about Leonidas and the Spartans until lights-out. I have already read some of the books in the curriculum once, and so now I will be able to ‘read a book,’ during my second round of reading and discussion at St. John’s. My junior year in particular was my most interesting round of humanities. It focused entirely on Greek works, starting with Homer and the playwrights, transitioning into Thucydides, and then on to Plato and Aristotle. I enjoyed reading and discussing these works very much. St. John’s is appealing because I will get to read some of my favorite texts for a second time, as well as many new works. In other words, Antigone humanized the esoteric and function-driven debates I’d studied last year. Finishing the play, I was ashamed that I’d harbored such skepticism at the outset of my reading. My experience with Antigone reminds me why I get excited each time I use calculus in physics or art in cooking, and I look forward to a lifetime of making these connections. I am a reader because I am a writer, not the other way around. Index cards, store receipts, and any other paper I can find, covered in notes I took, stick out of the tops of my books. J.K. Rowling clearly saw her application of appellations not as a burden, but an opportunity to enrich the story and world she had created and expand its reach. She leaves it to the readers to discover or concoct an explanation for why wizards shout bastardized Latin phrases to cast spells, stick their heads in fireplaces to chat with friends, and send letters via owl. An easy focus of Rowling’s accessible wordplay are the spells. Usually a crafted mix of Latin and English, their verbalization sounds “magical” but still allows readers to suss out a guess as to the spell’s purpose. As a high school Latin student, I find this especially impressive. Rowling’s incorporation of Latin, the foundation of many modern languages, lends the spells more universality (who wants spells in English, anyway?) and adds to the realism of the series. Antigone has become my favorite book because it wraps political and legal theory around complex characters and a compelling narrative. Prior to reading Antigone , I assumed that if I hadn’t read every book that pertained to the architecture of US government, I had at least heard of them. Antigone proved this assumption wrong because Antigone itself was a case study in the actual consequences of ideas discussed by political philosophers. I dream of a place where everyone enjoys books differently. There is greatness to be found in every book, but these are some of the writers that challenged what I thought to be true and opened the door to moral questions that will take more than my lifetime to answer. I hope to start answering these questions at St. John’s. My senior year, my class was assigned Kafka’s Metamorphosis. My peers neglected the reading, doing only what they had to do to maintain decent grades.