From dd678f63f6c4dd2f029f1196b1b2e65b46d20200 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Holden Rohrer Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2020 20:29:54 -0400 Subject: a personal essay Woops, so... uhh... turns out I don't need this for Tech's application (it's incomplete, so that's probably fine if I need it for UGA) --- application/05_personal_essay | 78 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 78 insertions(+) create mode 100644 application/05_personal_essay (limited to 'application/05_personal_essay') diff --git a/application/05_personal_essay b/application/05_personal_essay new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea1d093 --- /dev/null +++ b/application/05_personal_essay @@ -0,0 +1,78 @@ +The Personal Essay (250--650 words) +Options: +- Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is + so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete + without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. +- The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to + later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or + failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the + experience? +- Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. + What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome? +- Describe a problem you've solved or a problem you'd like to solve. It + can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical + dilemma---anything that is of personal importance, no matter the + scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or + could be taken to identify a solution. +- Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period + of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. +- Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes + you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do + you turn to when you want to learn more? +- Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've + already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of + your own design. + +Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes +you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do +you turn to when you want to learn more? + +"Grok: to understand intimately and completely." +I live in pursuit of fundamental understanding in general and am more +than willing to bang my head against a wall to achieve it. +This is somewhat a pedagogical trick---learning conflates understanding. +But deep understanding does have value. + +Mathematical reasoning, the formalistic kind, requires it to determine +novel results, and I can easily get lost in mathematical problems with +well-defined start points. +Take Hilbert systems, "axiomatizations" (definitions) of formal logic, +with exactly one operator---"if A then B." +These axioms define certain transformations you can do on true +statements and still keep them true, like "if it's raining, then if I'm +wearing boots, it's raining." +From there, you can construct much bigger and more useful theory, either +by adding new axioms like equality or variables, or by inference from +the existing axioms. +I see this construction from first principles as beautiful, but it's not +entirely aesthetic. +Higher mathematics has a reputation for being unpragmatic---and it +is---but its absolute correctness means that given simple assumptions, +complex results can be shown to be intuitively, exactly true. +And the process of finding a solution is equally rewarding "not because +it is easy but because it is hard." +>> Probably silly to include + +Programming computers is less fundamental, but it's similarly +enthralling. +There are dozens of layers of abstraction that form a complete system. +I wish I could completely understand the full stack, and I might be able +to---superficially and for a single specific machine or purpose, but +like the whole of mathematics, it is impossible for anyone to fully +understand it all. +Currently, I'm writing a program that serves resources over a network +protocol. +It isn't currently working, but that's part of the fun: the +breakthroughs and blockage are great. +Deciphering a complex system into an exact description is just +indescribably captivating, like code-breaking or inventing. +This is, to be fair, reinventing the wheel, but that is often one of the +best ways to understand it. +I've worked on other levels of abstraction, from assembly language to +cloud environments, and it's always very interesting for me to +Pragmatists would criticize me for reinventing the wheel, and although I +am, + +Both math and programming I've touched on academically, math moreso, but +I haven't reached out to the community locally. +I -- cgit