twoplustwoequalsblog

I have been working on my college essays quite diligently for the last several weeks. However, due to the number of times I have revised them, I am absolutely sick of working on them. Frankly, I think an essay question like “Write about a significant experience in your life” does little to reveal a person’s character, because it far to vague and it is easy for people to cater to what they think you want.

Instead, I am going to write a short essay answering the question, “In what ways are you like a volcano?”

To the average person walking down the street, I might not look much like a volcano, but really, there is a lot that the geographical landmark and I have in common.
For one thing, volcanoes can be active and spewing out lava, or dormant and slowly building up pressure until they release it in one great eruption. Sometimes I find myself in this dormant stage, carefully watching and waiting as I slowly build up ideas for different things I could do. Then, once the possibilities in my head reach a critical mass, they burst out of my head and into reality. Some of them are creative projects: photography or a t-shirt I designed. Others are physical projects: a new approach for something on the robotics team or planning a fundraising event for my youth group. Either way, I like to gather information and plan before I go into action.
When a volcano erupts, it leaves a massive change in the environment. I like to think that I leave changes too, but in a more positive way. I try to help other people when they are having problems with something I know a lot about, teaching them a little bit that can help them move further. Some of my ideas try to change the psyche of people around me. Free Shirt Week was an idea of mine where everyone could stop worrying about looking cool and just wear the shirts they got for participating in some event. A lot of people did it, and it brought a bit of flavor to life.
There’s nothing that people can do to stop volcanoes, and sometimes I can be just as stubborn. Last year I worked on the robotics team to develop a system with a camera to automatically find and interact with certain objects based on color. A lot of people on the team told me I wasn’t going to be able to do it, but I spent hours and hours working closer and closer to my goal. I never actually reached that goal, but I learned a lot on the way there. If I had just given up, all that opportunity would have been lost.
When Mt. Vesuvius erupted in the 62AD, it buried the city of Pompeii in ash, completely wiping it out, but preserving artifacts and villas for hundreds of years. While I have personally yet to destroy any cities, I believe that preserving our world for future reference is a very important thing. I enjoy photography a lot, and I take lots of pictures. I hope that my photographs are preserved long enough that my grandchildren, or their grandchildren, can look at them and marvel at the world the way it ‘used to be.’ Perhaps my pictures that I think of now as artistic will be scoffed at in the future, or maybe I’ll be the next Michelangelo.
Volcanoes may seem like complex natural forces, but they can be deconstructed. I think you can get a better idea about anything by looking at all the pieces that make it up and understand the interrelatedness of each part. I am a combination of many pieces, but the whole that they create reflects the different subtleties that each one brings with it.