Supplemental Application Essays

Supplemental Application Essays 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. Any pessimist can simply expose and discredit vice and folly. Even calling something “vice or “folly” discredits it. To make a reader care, an author must place an earnest heart within their satire and at least hint that we can do better. 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. 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. 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. 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. Merriam-Webster defines satire as “trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly.” Catch-22 clearly fits within this definition. However, I find this definition lacking, good satire should hold up a fun-house mirror to society to accentuate its problems and perhaps offer hope for the future. This would place satire in the realm of speculative fiction, the genre that includes science fiction and fantasy. When I was a freshman in high school, The Colbert Report debuted. Attending a religious school in rural Missouri, most of the faculty and students were rather conservative. They weren’t stupid; they knew the joke was on them, but it was funny enough that they watched the show and read the books. With the increasing division caused by social media’s ideological bubbles, satire has become a necessary means to provoke thought and conversation outside of one’s normal exposure. 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. We have put up walls around ourselves and entrenched our ideas, ready for war. Satire is an ideological Trojan Horse, and, when used well, a powerful sneak attack on ignorance. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, in addition to contributing to our modern language, is the most accurate depiction, I have encountered, of life in the Air Force. The feeling of being involved, nervous and excited all at the same time. The most important aspect about the Summer Academy was finding my people, the ones who talked about Nietzsche and Plato at lunch and had long debates and poetry slams after Seminar. Making friends was never an easy feat for me, but at the Summer Academy, I found everyone I talked to felt like we had been friends for years. I made an even more intimate group of friends who I still keep in touch with because they are more than friends to me, they are family. What excites me about St. John’s the most is that I have some previous exposure and that familiarity will improve both my understanding of these texts as well as my ability to discuss them. 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. As a result of reading this book and the Meno, I have a much different perspective on how knowledge comes into being and how it is communicated, or in the case of my public education, not communicated. I find it very intriguing that with the right story and progression, anyone can be led to not only a deeper understanding of a subject but also a greater appreciation for one. Antigone has become my favorite book because it wraps political and legal theory around complex characters and a compelling narrative.