Musings on Caltech :: Graduate Admissions Essays

Musings on Caltech   My parents convinced me to take away a picture taken a couple of months after I graduated from high school, back when I still thought I was pretty smart. Now, I only take the trouble to dress up when Im back at home, where I can be pampered by my parents. here at Caltech, Im usu solelyy slightly emaciated (they dont bother with feeding Techers everywhere weekends here) with a wearier complexion (Sleep? What is this sleep?). Also, I tend to be a little more(prenominal) shaggy-looking, since haircuts are rather rare for many Scurve Techers.   I like other people to think that Im part of a mixed cultural elite. My life is a superfetation of high culture I applaud classical music that turns normal humans insane (Glasss Floe from Glassworks, for example) Id be first in line to pay millions for the mindless doodles of a kindergartener I take my dates to those enigmatic European films which people go to for the repair purpose of looking cultured and my s pewing about the untapped potential of the info superhighway will bore even Al Gore. Of course, my crassness and loutish manners probably automatic ally disqualify me from any elitist group I crave to be a member of but that, of course, equitable apodictically identifies me as a cultural poseur.   It doesnt end there. Though Im not really all that white, Im still male, heterosexual, Christian (Protestant, even), pretty conservative, and non-vegetarian (notice all the wrong groups). Having been fairly exhaustively corrupted in submission to Western indoctrination (MTV, and all that), Ive been properly excoriated for oppressing more than my fair share of under-represented cultures women, atheists, liberals, gays.... Ive probably oppressed you, too, if you happen to be in any way different from me. Or maybe Im the victim. When someone reaches the acme where hes willing to give up 5,000 years of cultural tradition just to listen to the insidious chortles of Beavis and Butthea d, we really cant tell whos been victimized. Or at least, thats what we all claim.   These things should bother me constantly (Im the kind of guy who thinks more about how he should think/feel than how he really thinks/feels), but I fence with the ennui by numbing my senses with my opiate of choice studying Physics as a sophomore at Caltech. (This is odd, since I notice I probably waste more energy messing around with computers.