Admission Essay

Admission Essay I know the value of community and how to be a good friend. Waldorf school’s use a block system for teaching lessons that are roughly three weeks long. My values in education and learning had started to collide with the ones in my school. ” the educational authorities from my school responds, “It is what it is! There are no textbooks, for each main lesson a student makes a main lesson book containing all original work. There is a substantial amount of time devoted to the arts and physical movement as well. ” As I think learning has its own value in itself. The ways to achieve it are numerous and depends on what one’s purpose of learning is. In my previous experience of the education system that I was given in Korea had its purpose having the value that students could grasp a great amount of knowledge at short time from teachers lecturing. However my purpose was fulfilling my curiosity, rather than just memorizing other’s idea for the matter of winning or losing competition with my friends. Therefore the way I learn had to be different from the way of learning where the “efficiency”, which my school claimed, was mostly concerned. Even if nobody told them to do it, the students were eager to learn from each other, spontaneously, even in the hallway, dining room, and outside in the beauty of nature. Students were lying on the grass so peacefully reading a book yet eagerly talking with couple of friends who took same seminar and then going back to reading again. At the actual seminar at night, they sat around the big table and the exploration of ideas started to happen on the heels of each other. Above all, I was amazed how tutors and students were connected with each other. I couldn’t find any dominance or submission in the classes and everyone was truly involved in learning from each other, whether it was a tutor or student. Perhaps it is in functionality and mechanics, but many parts of the universe are uninhabitable and violent. What we know about the destiny of the universe is quite bleak as well. Most of our endeavors in this world can be tied back to a philosophical question, but perhaps this is an ideal life. However, in my experience this is the truth, and I would like to continue my own and very human tradition of questioning. St. John’s fosters a life of the mind temperament that I think could last a lifetime. That’s why I consider this a great book, because it takes creativity and self- ­reflection and ideas about love and brings them together in new and powerful ways that make me feel more attuned to my surroundings. Although his writing is not easy to understand at first, I find that it’s worth the struggle. Everything Calvino writes is the perfect mixture of scientific fact and fable-like fantasy, and I’m so glad that I took my mom’s advice in that bookstore in New York. This prompts me to wonder if the universe is beautiful or not. All the classes are taught seminar-style and the most any classroom has is 25 kids. I have truly thrived in this kind of mindful learning environment, and think it would be imprudent to pursue an education that may be heavy in testing and memorization. I am too used to sitting in crowded high school classes where more than half the class did not do the reading. Reading is not checking off a box or attaining a grade, but something I have chosen many times and will continue to choose for the rest of my life. I think that my sophomore to senior years of high school have been a great preparation for a school like St. John’s. Each year I had a two hour seminar course every day, in which half of the grade is based on discussion, and the other half is on papers. This has given me unique experience both in practice with writing analytical papers on a text, as well as practice with reading and discussing a text in a deeper way. The curriculum at St. John’s is actually not that different from the curriculum at my school as I attend a Waldorf school. I began attending the Waldorf school when I was in 7th grade. From this education, I have not only strengthened immensely as a thinker and student, but as a person as well. I chose this story as an example of a book that I consider great and has influenced me because it showcases the fun, yet calculated, way in which Calvino relates these tales. This story and others like it inCosmicomics influence me to look at the world differently, and cause me to question things we take as fact. Calvino makes me ponder the deeper questions of the universe. Although I don’t love having a constant existential crisis, I do love reading things that push me to consider new ways of thinking.