Musings on Caltech :: Graduate Admissions Essays

Musings on Caltech   My parents convinced me to have a picture lotn a couple of months after I graduated from high school, back when I still thought I was pretty smart. Now, I only take the squabble to dress up when Im back at home, where I can be pampered by my parents. Here at Caltech, Im usually slightly emaciated (they dont bother with aliment Techers over weekends here) with a wearier complexion (Sleep? What is this sleep?). Also, I tend to be a little more shaggy-looking, since haircuts are rather rare for many Scurve Techers.   I like other people to conceptualise that Im part of a multifarious cultural elite. My life is a superfetation of high culture I enjoy authoritative 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 preschooler I take my dates to those enigmatic European films which people go to for the sole purpose of looking cultured and my spewing about the untapped potential of the information superhighway will stupid person even Al Gore. Of course, my crassness and boorish manners probably automatically disqualify me from any elitist group I crave to be a part of but that, of course, skillful 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 impairment groups). Having been fairly thoroughly 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 point where hes willing to give up 5,000 years of cultural tradition just to listen to the insidious chortles of Beavis and Butthead, 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 cope with the ennui by numbing my senses with my opiate of choice studying Physics as a soph at Caltech. (This is odd, since I notice I probably waste more energy messing around with computers.