Why You Shouldnt Let The College Essay Stress You Out

Why You Shouldn’t Let The College Essay Stress You Out After I came home, I knew I needed more information. I wanted to know more, I wanted to experience it myself. The summer after my Junior year I signed up for a Summer Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. 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. Surprisingly enough I made friends within 20 minutes of being on campus. I was able to share my obsession with reading and the knowledge I gathered on any subject I put my mind to. I know too many people who want to silence their opponents instead of understanding them. I want a safe space for inquiry, not a safe space for ignorance. I know too many people who are content with limited knowledge and are discontent with limited possessions. I want to expose myself to as many ideas and viewpoints as possible, and I want to be more than a consumer. Maybe not, but I loved the rules, the structure, and the big questions that surrounded organizing a government. I immediately found my people and a continual comfort of my environment which automatically equated to the feeling of being home. Home is the feeling of being comfortable with the uncertainty and uncomfortable situations. 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. This experience will not only be beneficial to me in discussion, but will hopefully raise the quality of a seminar for the class as a whole. The small enrollment size of as well as the overall approach to education makes St. John’s the ideal place for me to extend my positive experience of high school into the college setting. St John’s advertises itself as the school for readers and thinkers, people who want more than a degree. I know too many people whose only hope for college is to earn a diploma, and if they can do it without learning or growing, even better. I want to spend the rest of my life learning as much I can, because getting a diploma without expanding your mind is like saving a receipt for something you don’t own. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. In my pursuit to find a catch, I could only find nothing. Unlike other colleges with special course requirements, unstable administration, and strange traditional customs such as Freshman not being able to say the word ‘duck’, I found complete and absolute nothing. I signed up for more information; they stayed true to the image and personality of the college. I visited the Santa Fe campus and experienced classes, the campus, and the people. 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. 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. All the classes are taught seminar-style and the most any classroom has is 25 kids.