College Essays

Unrelated stories that take place in a setting besides Star Wars...

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College Essays

Post by Maul_Junior »

All right...I wanted to post this somewhere, but didn't want to clutter up the Gen forum, and it didn't fit anywhere else. I'll post my College Essays here, and I would like you guys to tell me what you think, and give me any pointers that you can give.

I'm a pretty good writer, so there shouldn't be THAT much to change, but better safe than sorry. Plese respond right in this thread.

And on a side note, this IS allowed, i would think, as all I see is Non-Star Wars THREADS and
any non-SW writing
, not stories :P

anyway, my first essay, which is already beyond my reach, as I turned it in already...

basically, I had to choose one object, and say why I liked it. He said one page, and I gave him a little more than a page MS Word. I didn't realize that he meant College-ruled paper pages.

>.<

:D

anyway....

---------------------------------------------------------

If I had to specify one object as my favorite above all others that I own, it would have to be my computers, which I have named Ashley, and Ashley II. Ashley got her name from when I was starting a journal (one start of a half-dozen, of which I stopped after I forgot about it). Several years later, I upgraded to my current computer, and I decided to stick with the same name, but, because it was a different computer, I gave it the name Ashley II.

Ashley, at the time I got her, was my dad's old computer, and was a Pentium Two, Three Hundred Megahertz Computer with thirty-two Megabytes of RAM. If you are not computer literate, I will explain these ratings for you. Pentium is, obviously, the name of the Processor line, which I believe Intel makes. The Two (also II) designation denotes it as the second model, of which there have been a third and, most recently, a fourth model. A Hertz is a scientific term for the number of times a wave cycles through its up-down phase per second. The Prefix Mega- is a word that I believe descends from Greek which means “one million.” I don't know what RAM is an acronym for, but I DO know that it makes the computer run faster, and is graded in bytes, which is what information is stored as. So, for Ashley, she could handle thirty-two million bytes per second. The more RAM you have, obviously, the faster your computer can run. However, most motherboards (upon which everything else for the computer is placed/connected to) have a maximum amount of RAM which they can hold, and can only hold certain types of RAM.

She was used as a moderate gaming computer, and also as my internet connection. While she was good for older games and the internet, she was too slow to play any of the newer games, and could not run some of the older games because the only video support was the onboard video card, imprinted onto the Motherboard (Onboard video is made on the motherboard, as the name suggests, and allows the user to run the computer with a usually expensive video card, but usually isn't that good for gaming). She was a trusty and reliable computer, but sometimes my knee hit the Shut Down or Restart buttons when I was playing, and I found this both disconcerting and rather inconvenient. However, I feel obligated to point out that this was my mistake, not one of the computer (except, perhaps, for the designer....)

Ashley II, my current computer, was purchased one or two months ago, from newegg.com in parts. By that, I mean that I purchased all of the different parts separately, and had one of my friends help me put her together. She is an AMD Athlon Sixty-Four (once again, Athlon Sixty-Four is the Processor Model, and AMD is the company that made it) thirty-eight hundred Plus (this means that she runs at thirty-eight hundred plus Megahertz, or three billion, eight hundred million hertz, or cycles per second. She also has one Gigabyte (one billion bytes per second) of RAM within her, and another Gigabyte is pending. She also has a Digital Video Device Writable/Re-Writable (DVD W/RW), and an ATI Radeon 9800SE Video Card. The DVD Drive runs at a maximum of 16x (please note that she runs at either 40x or 52x for CDs. DVD ratings are lower than CD ratings, for reasons that I do not, at this moment, understand). The ATI Radeon 9800SE (once again, ATI is the company that makes it, and Radeon 9800 Special Edition is the model) runs at two hundred fifty-six megabytes (two hundred fifty-six million bytes per second), which is currently near the top of the line (I believe that as of August thirty-first, the maximum amount of memory on a video card is five hundred twelve Megabytes). In addition to all of this, she also has a two hundred Gigabyte hard drive (two hundred billion bytes worth of storage space, in layman's terms).

Ashley II is used as my gaming computer, as well as my internet connection. As I have already said on the first day of class, I play Guild Wars, an online Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (Or MMORPG), due to the fact that it has no monthly fee. However, due to the fact that you and two others in this College Writing I class play World of Warcraft, another MMORPG, I may have to pick up my own copy. I also play numerous other games, such as the Total War series, The Sims versions one and Two, various Tycoon games, and other such strategy games. That does not, however, mean that I do not enjoy playing such games as Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Raven Shield, or Halo (One or Two) on occasion. I just do not own those games.

Ashley and Ashley II are special to me because I spend so much time on them. Perhaps my parents would prefer that I spend some of my time differently, but I have an affinity for computers, however, and like to spend time on them, whether that time is spent surfing the internet, playing games, or simply writing.

Thank you for your time, and I hope that this has been a very informative essay.

--------------------------------------


Questions? Comments on how weird I am to name my computers?

Grammar corrections?
Jack Thompson wrote:I think I’ve got a First Amendment right to annoy people
Some people hate Canadians...Two of my favorite Science Fiction Characters are Canadian: Rodney McKay and Deadpool.

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Post by nehima »

*evil cackle* You shouldn't have given me this. You'll see. I'll print it out and mark it up and scan it in and you'll see.

... Caro could have told you you'd regret this *cracks knuckles* I'm the editing nazi.
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Post by Maul_Junior »

I look forward to it.

I have a paper due tomorrow, but it's not the final one. the rough draft of a paper that's due Friday (this one) will be due Wednesday, so I'll post the rough draft as soon as I'm done with it.


if you can, scan it into your comp so I can see your markings.

:P

...

who in the world is Caro?
Jack Thompson wrote:I think I’ve got a First Amendment right to annoy people
Some people hate Canadians...Two of my favorite Science Fiction Characters are Canadian: Rodney McKay and Deadpool.

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Post by nehima »

Caro would be Carolyn, aka Jace aka RileyKenobi.

And here you go.
page one
page two

Please print them out if you actually care to use them, I'd prefer not to have them on my server too long.

And if it seems harsh, well, there's a reason I'm an editing nazi. I get mean.
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Post by Balsa »

Five dollars that I would have marked up the paper with more red and blue. :P Not because it's bad, but just because I'm even more anal than Nehima. :P

Seriously though, I'd like to give a read through, but I'm tired and stuff and yeah. lol. Perhaps tomorrow. :)
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Post by Maul_Junior »

nice....

I've got 'em on my computer, so you can take 'em down if you want.

that's exactly what I was looking for.
Jack Thompson wrote:I think I’ve got a First Amendment right to annoy people
Some people hate Canadians...Two of my favorite Science Fiction Characters are Canadian: Rodney McKay and Deadpool.

Deadpool+Siryn 4ever
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Post by Archangel »

Yeah, I usually do some brutal editing on ... everything, but especially my own stuff. But, like Balsa, I'm a bit too tired to read that right now. :P

And I know plenty of ... okay, two, counting you, who name their computers. ;)

...

And you have to write teensy-weensy essays like this for college? Man... college is going to be so much fun. :mrgreen:

Oh, and I would still print, edit, and scan your essay there, but nehima seems to have done a fine job ... besides that, you probably couldn't read my correction notes.

"Every man has one thing he can do better than anyone else, and usually, it's reading his own handwriting." :P
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Post by Maul_Junior »

yeah, I know.

these are so SHORT!

it's not even funny....

I was expecting four or five pages MS Word...

instead, my current one is three to five normal pages (two pages MS word for me :D).
Jack Thompson wrote:I think I’ve got a First Amendment right to annoy people
Some people hate Canadians...Two of my favorite Science Fiction Characters are Canadian: Rodney McKay and Deadpool.

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Post by Master_Cameo_Naton »

Enjoy it while it lasts... the papers will get bigger and bigger, depending on your ultimate major. My undergraduate final paper was around 97 pages, all told. Took all semester to research and write it.

But then, my Graduate Degree culminating project was only about 25 pages. Then again, I had only one week to do all the research and writing for that one. :)
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Post by Maul_Junior »

okay...

the paper I'm turning in today...

The main person that I think has shaped me the way I am today is my Dad. True, my Mom did too, but my Dad was the main person. He's a doctor, so he's got a lot of stuff, and so do me and my siblings. While I may have sometimes harbored a dark thought or two about him and my mother, I have an annoying ability to analyze things constantly that brings my attitude around surprisingly quickly.

We haven't really had to go without anything in our entire life, now that I think about it, except for cable or satellite television. We've never had them in our house (although my grandparents on my mother's side, who live right next door to us do, until they go down to Arizona for the winter), and I don't expect that we ever will, either. Although this means that I'll miss Sci Fi Friday quite a bit, it's not that big a deal for me.

Recently, he quit his job at Mayo Clinic, and opened up his own private practice. This was a giant undertaking, and, since he did that much earlier this year, he has employed all but two of us in my immediate family in that practice. My mother answers the business phone, which is actually in a large room on the third floor of our large house that we call the office; I scan documents that he brings home onto a very nice laptop that he brings to work; and my older sister worked with him in the operating room to prepare for veterinary school, which she began this year.

I'm a good kid, basically. Insults just roll off my back. I literally don't care what people think of me. They can insult me all they want, and I'll just shake my head, laugh, and go about whatever I'm doing. If I'm just sitting there, trying to talk to them, however, I'll probably just sit there and laugh at them. If any of their insults were ever to hit home and make me mad, my afore-mentioned curse of over-analyzation would bring me back to my normal mood in a much shorter time than might otherwise be possible.

I'm seventeen, soon to be eighteen in December. I've never had a drop of alcohol in my life; never smoked anything; and never kissed or been kissed, and I'm proud of it. Some people might think that I'm a freak, and, well, I am. I'm more hyper than anyone else I know, and do more stupid things than anyone else I know, although I DO have a line that I don't cross, because I am a Christian.

I think that women are something to be treated with the utmost respect, if not revered outright. On that grounds, I have never been on a date, and I actually have a reputation in my youth group as a bachelor, due to one time that I announced that I never wanted to get married—of course, as is mentioned previously, I am a Christian, so I would also maintain my fidelity. Of course, I have no problems interacting with them socially, which may or may not explain my natural affinity for dancing, which is what actually started this whole fiasco.

Last Wednesday night, I accidentally hit another car with my 20-foot plus Dodge in the Maple Hall parking lot, while I was trying to find the Swing Dance Club. I knew that the building it was in started with an “M,” but I had forgotten what building. Ironically enough, the Swing Dance Club meets in the Memorial building which is pretty much on the other side of campus. It was my first incident with any sort of traffic altercation, and I handled it pretty badly, and took off without thinking. Even as I was leaving, I knew that I had to go back and find the car that I hit, but I also knew that there was no way that I would be able to find it. Of course, this would be disproved several hours later, but that isn't the point I'm trying to make here.

I went about my business, and went home. On the way, I actually had to pull over to the side of the road. I was very upset, because I had never done anything like that, and I felt as if I had betrayed some sort of trust between my parents and myself. I still do, but I knew that I had to tell them about the car, which would have been impossible to hide, anyway, because of the huge dent that the accident had caused.

When I got home, I had absolutely no clue what to expect, and I was more than a little scared. I went straight downstairs or the first story which, because my brother has moved out to Grand Forks, is usually completely deserted except for me. I stayed down there until nearly midnight, or almost three hours after the accident occurred, until I finally got up the courage to tell my Dad what happened.

When he finally saw what I had done, he took it pretty well. He stared at it for a few seconds, then lectured me on the importance of never leaving the scene of an accident. Resignedly, he informed me that we had to go back to the parking lot. He got my mother, and we headed out for the Maple parking lot, but not before grimly telling me that he had to be up at 5 AM the next morning for work.

I knew approximately where the accident was, and I had to tell my Dad—Mom stayed in the car—that I had pulled through as I usually did, so I don't have to back out of a parking spot, so the damage that we were looking for wouldn't be on the side that they were looking for. Fortunately, I remembered driving over a small concrete depression that, I think, was probably used for draining water away from the parking lot, and to a drain somewhere in the parking lot.

Inexplicably, when we found the car that I hit, it had no major damage. Yes, it did have myriad scratches all over the rear right quarter of the car, but no major damage comparable to the giant dent in my truck. My Dad, after having satisfied himself that we did indeed have the right car, wrote down the license plate number and the Parking Permission tag, and told me to call Campus Security first thing in the morning and report the accident.

We went home—not before leaving a note for the owner of the car with our phone number, of course—and my mother went to bed immediately. My father had some additional work at his desk, and he needed me to do some scanning for him. Then, exhausted, he went to bed, at about 1:30, only to rise, of course, almost three and a half hours later. The next day, when I woke up, I found a note on my desk from him, telling me that he was behind me all the way, and that if I needed anything that I should call him.
And THAT is why I admire my Dad
Jack Thompson wrote:I think I’ve got a First Amendment right to annoy people
Some people hate Canadians...Two of my favorite Science Fiction Characters are Canadian: Rodney McKay and Deadpool.

Deadpool+Siryn 4ever
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