This year, as they are every year, the senior class was given the task of writing an essay for their common application; many colleges use Common App to determine whether the prospective student gets in. This essay can be a deciding factor on admission to a certain university, so naturally many students spend a lot of time on it. With a generalized prompt, the essay can be a bit of a roadblock in the application process. Here is one of nine essays from Country Day Seniors that The Scroll and the college counseling felt knocked their essay out of the park.
George Crowley:
I’ve always been a tinkerer. Since I was young, I was really interested in how things work, spending hours devouring books about space craft, fighter planes, you name it. One of my fondest childhood memories is when I bought from a garage sale a set of books on the history of flight, from the Wright Brothers into the Jet Age. I spent hours upon hours devouring the series, staring in awe at jet engines and magical words I’d never heard before: “supercharger,” “turboprop,” and many more. From then on, I was hooked—anything mechanical or electrical was fascinating to me. When I was 8, I planned to build my own small electric car, complete with lights and all. I spent a lot of time diagramming wiring and the frame, but as I was only 8, none of the wiring was exactly feasible.
As I grew, my interest shifted to Lego, and I spent hours lost in my own world, creating planes, tanks, and much more from those little bricks. I’d pass hours shut in my room manipulating the pieces until they matched exactly the vehicle I was trying to replicate. But Lego could only replicate those vaunted aircraft, not soar through the air, and so came my next hobby.
My first remote control airplane was a simple, small Piper Cub, but I soon graduated to larger and larger aircraft. After my first few, I discovered that it was even more fun to hotrod them; add a smaller propeller here, push a few more amps there, and suddenly your plane is hurtling by at a greater clip than before. Within two years, I was a fixture at my local remote control club, a regular, known to all. I was always ready to lend a helping hand to new members, explaining why they should set up their plane a certain way, or happily giving test flights. This fascination with all things remote controlled eventually led me to the University of Cincinnati last summer, where I interned with a graduate student working on commercial applications of drones. I was able to apply much of my knowledge of RC planes and electronics, and learned a lot about the commercial side of drones. I also gained a stronger understanding of the various disciplines of engineering, from mechanical, to electrical, to aeronautical. I was surprised to learn that many of the abilities I had picked up over the years as I tinkered, such as soldering or using power tools, were really useful in a lab setting.
I know that I’ll always be like this, someone who loves understanding how things work, why they work. I know I’ll never be able to look at a sleek car or computer without thinking about pulling it apart to see how it works. This is who I am, and I love it, even if it means that every once in a while I break something in the process of disassembling it. Other people might find it relaxing to settle down and watch some TV, but I’ll always be at home at my work bench building some new contraption. I have no idea what my next hobby will be, but I’m almost certainly sure it’ll be one where a soldering iron and Dremel come in handy.
