The Gamer Essay
There has also been some demand for my Stanford Application essay.
Enjoy...
Prompt:
As you reflect on your life thus far, what has someone said, written or expressed in some fashion that is especially meaningful to you? Why?
Response:
Humorist Dave Barry once wrote, "The typical Nintendo game involves controlling a little man who runs around the screen trying to stay alive while numerous powerful and inexplicably hostile forces try to kill him; in other words, it's exactly like real life." Being a video game enthusiast, I can safely say that this assessment of video games is largely accurate. Although I would be reluctant to adopt such a paranoid view of the world, there are indeed many parallels between video games and real life.
My interest in video games began when I was a small child. I was fascinated by the fact that I had the ability to control what happened on screen. My parents quickly realized I was obsessed, and vowed that I would never own a video game console. I was a little gamer without video games, but I was not deterred. Even though my parents refused to let me play Nintendo, I could still play "Pretendo" on the walls of my kindergarten classroom. I imagined that my fingers were a video game character jumping along the two-dimensional surface of the wall, swinging from thumbtack to thumbtack and trekking across posters. When my puzzled teachers expressed their concern to my mother, she immediately recognized that I was playing Nintendo in my head.
This love of gaming pervaded nearly every aspect of my childhood. I reveled in handball, volleyball and soccer with my peers on the playground, and where there were no games to play, I would create some for myself. I have vivid memories of running through the streets of San Francisco with my little brother, stomping on all the manholes we could find to "earn points", and of deftly maneuvering around the black tiles on the supermarket floor because they were "made of lava". I fashioned arbitrary challenges for myself daily - could I sneak through every room in the house without my parents noticing? Could I keep the helium balloon from floating to the ceiling using only my pinky? To this day, I still sit through entire classes with my chair precariously balanced on two legs purely to create a little extra challenge. Reflecting back on my childhood, I am glad that I never owned a video game because it forced me to be creative.
When I was in middle school, my parents caved in and bought me a Nintendo 64 console for my Bar Mitzvah. I was ecstatic to finally be able to play actual video games, but I soon found that the best games were those that allowed my creativity to shine. One such game was called Glider Pro. The object of the game was to control a paper airplane as it soared through a house full of obstacles like balloons, toasters, candles and electrical outlets. The game's best feature, however, was a level editor that gave me the power to design my own houses. I spent hours constructing houses, imbuing each with a unique flavor; one infested with lizards hungry for lined paper, one modeled after an Easter egg hunt, another one taking place in the belly of a monster. I even recently discovered that my houses have received critical acclaim among Glider Pro players on the internet; I felt like an author being honored posthumously. Indeed, my process for making video game levels - first analyzing the levels designed by professionals and then attempting to emulate that standard of quality - parallels my creative writing process. And, just as I attempted to bring a unique flavor to each of the houses I designed, I try to bring something special to each of my poems; one written from the perspective of a pane of glass, one a modern interpretation of the witches' chant in Macbeth, one where every other word in the poem is "lemming".
Since the beginning of high school, my interest in video games has waned as my free time is increasingly channeled into more engaging activities like writing and sports. However, the obscure skills and experiences I garnered while playing video games still play an interesting role in my life today. Besides improving my reaction time and hand-eye coordination, for example, gaming has made me a better problem solver. One time, the maple syrup on my breakfast plate began creeping ominously toward my hash browns, but I was able to tilt the saccharine substance in the other direction by placing a fork under one end of the plate - a trick inspired by the puzzle game Super Monkey Ball. My experiences as a gamer have also made me willing to accept any challenge. Though it was by no means a simple task, earning an "A" in AP Chemistry was practically a cakewalk compared to completing all thirty levels of Super Puyo Pop's master mode - a feat so mind-bogglingly difficult to accomplish that I think it would be within reason to request that it appear on my transcript.
I know that life is more than a survival-horror game, but in a way, Dave Barry was right. Every day really is full of little obstacles and challenges, whether they manifest themselves as schoolwork or water polo opponents. Even though it can sometimes be overwhelming to navigate the balloons, toasters, candles and electrical outlets of life, I will never stop striving to set the high score.
Prompt:
As you reflect on your life thus far, what has someone said, written or expressed in some fashion that is especially meaningful to you? Why?
Response:
Humorist Dave Barry once wrote, "The typical Nintendo game involves controlling a little man who runs around the screen trying to stay alive while numerous powerful and inexplicably hostile forces try to kill him; in other words, it's exactly like real life." Being a video game enthusiast, I can safely say that this assessment of video games is largely accurate. Although I would be reluctant to adopt such a paranoid view of the world, there are indeed many parallels between video games and real life.
My interest in video games began when I was a small child. I was fascinated by the fact that I had the ability to control what happened on screen. My parents quickly realized I was obsessed, and vowed that I would never own a video game console. I was a little gamer without video games, but I was not deterred. Even though my parents refused to let me play Nintendo, I could still play "Pretendo" on the walls of my kindergarten classroom. I imagined that my fingers were a video game character jumping along the two-dimensional surface of the wall, swinging from thumbtack to thumbtack and trekking across posters. When my puzzled teachers expressed their concern to my mother, she immediately recognized that I was playing Nintendo in my head.
This love of gaming pervaded nearly every aspect of my childhood. I reveled in handball, volleyball and soccer with my peers on the playground, and where there were no games to play, I would create some for myself. I have vivid memories of running through the streets of San Francisco with my little brother, stomping on all the manholes we could find to "earn points", and of deftly maneuvering around the black tiles on the supermarket floor because they were "made of lava". I fashioned arbitrary challenges for myself daily - could I sneak through every room in the house without my parents noticing? Could I keep the helium balloon from floating to the ceiling using only my pinky? To this day, I still sit through entire classes with my chair precariously balanced on two legs purely to create a little extra challenge. Reflecting back on my childhood, I am glad that I never owned a video game because it forced me to be creative.
When I was in middle school, my parents caved in and bought me a Nintendo 64 console for my Bar Mitzvah. I was ecstatic to finally be able to play actual video games, but I soon found that the best games were those that allowed my creativity to shine. One such game was called Glider Pro. The object of the game was to control a paper airplane as it soared through a house full of obstacles like balloons, toasters, candles and electrical outlets. The game's best feature, however, was a level editor that gave me the power to design my own houses. I spent hours constructing houses, imbuing each with a unique flavor; one infested with lizards hungry for lined paper, one modeled after an Easter egg hunt, another one taking place in the belly of a monster. I even recently discovered that my houses have received critical acclaim among Glider Pro players on the internet; I felt like an author being honored posthumously. Indeed, my process for making video game levels - first analyzing the levels designed by professionals and then attempting to emulate that standard of quality - parallels my creative writing process. And, just as I attempted to bring a unique flavor to each of the houses I designed, I try to bring something special to each of my poems; one written from the perspective of a pane of glass, one a modern interpretation of the witches' chant in Macbeth, one where every other word in the poem is "lemming".
Since the beginning of high school, my interest in video games has waned as my free time is increasingly channeled into more engaging activities like writing and sports. However, the obscure skills and experiences I garnered while playing video games still play an interesting role in my life today. Besides improving my reaction time and hand-eye coordination, for example, gaming has made me a better problem solver. One time, the maple syrup on my breakfast plate began creeping ominously toward my hash browns, but I was able to tilt the saccharine substance in the other direction by placing a fork under one end of the plate - a trick inspired by the puzzle game Super Monkey Ball. My experiences as a gamer have also made me willing to accept any challenge. Though it was by no means a simple task, earning an "A" in AP Chemistry was practically a cakewalk compared to completing all thirty levels of Super Puyo Pop's master mode - a feat so mind-bogglingly difficult to accomplish that I think it would be within reason to request that it appear on my transcript.
I know that life is more than a survival-horror game, but in a way, Dave Barry was right. Every day really is full of little obstacles and challenges, whether they manifest themselves as schoolwork or water polo opponents. Even though it can sometimes be overwhelming to navigate the balloons, toasters, candles and electrical outlets of life, I will never stop striving to set the high score.