GHP. They all say that it’s life-changing. It’s annoying how often they say that it’s life changing. That’s all they ever say about it, that it’s life-changing…and they’re right.
Georgia Governor’s Honors Program is life-changing because it changes your perspective—on yourself, on your peers, and on the subject you love. The fifteen of us learned everything from culture to cuss words with our beautifully bearded professeur, Jordan, who treated us not as his pupils, but as his friends...
To put it bluntly, UGA is huge. To a liberal arts major who's never been in a grade with more than 120 people, huge is terrifying, a crush of people who will never know me or my name or my major or that I have a tendency to read obscure Wikipedia pages instead of doing homework while humming even more obscure French pop songs. But as a linguistics major and word junkie, huge is, at the same time…enthralling...
I like saying words. I enjoy reading words. I love making up words. Words weave themselves into the languages that I love to hear and want to learn and quietly creep across the pages of the stories I grew up reading and now write myself. Words have given me valuable insight into new worlds both real and created and shaped my outlook on life and culture. We often ignore their power to twist reality around them, instead choosing to abbreviate and slangify in sad slops of misspelled and forgotten text messages...
It seems to me that Carleton and I have something in common—we both love painting creativity across the mundane. I’ve written positive reviews for AP English on the new Pokémon game, given presentations glorifying everything that makes the tundra biome “rad,” and penned long essays in French praising the radical French Revolutionary Marat for dying in his bathtub. I refuse to be bored by school...
Macalester was the first college I found that had a soul. When I was a naïve sophomore, I thought getting college emails would be the coolest thing, though I quickly found my inbox crushed under hundreds of repetitive spammy messages—take our quiz, we’re #4, go sports team. They were soulless. Then, one cold 70º Georgia day, it came—an e-card of an orange from some obscure college I had never heard of...
Everything always came in twos: two languages, two suitcases, two weeks’ vacation, two weeks’ shipping time after two moves here and two there, two concrete apartments stuck together under the hot sun of continent number two. Everything that didn’t come in twos came in threes: three passengers visiting three grandparents three plane rides away. Life was made of numbers...
When I think of culture, I immediately think of "popular culture"--the mess of attitudes, ideas, images, references, and other societal flotsam and jetsam that drifts by me, that I swim in every day. I don't identify as readily with any national, religious, or ethnic culture, or stuff-you-see-in-museums culture, as much as I identify with popular culture...
While investigating colleges, I've kept in mind three particular interests. First, I would like to study history, as I'm keen to explore how events of the past continue to reverberate in the present. Second, while at college I want to engage in meaningful community service. And third, I'd eventually like to combine these interests in history and community service and possible pursue a career in social policy. After visiting Georgetown and researching what it has to offer, I believe that being part of Georgetown's American Studies program would certainly allow me to pursue those interests at the highest level.
Allow me to elaborate:..
I was ten when I first saw the names. I had explored St. Paul’s School before, but had never noticed the small slab of concrete at the base of an outside wall, the names of some thirty students scattered across it. They had surreptitiously etched their names in the still-wet concrete about one hundred years ago, or so I was told, but almost every signature was still legible...
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